A sense of history is not easily conjured from new construction. Yet in this cedar-shingled house in Amagansett, New York, reclaimed materials, architectural salvage and a certain willingness to embrace imperfection give a newly built family home an unusually settled character.
For Jess and Jonathan Nahon, co-founders of Sugarhouse Design & Architecture, this was the guiding idea from the outset. Overseeing the architecture, interiors and landscape, they worked closely with owners who wanted all the ease of a new house without anything feeling generic or overly pristine. “The question we kept coming back to was: how do we make a new home feel like it has a soul, as though it has been there forever?” they explain.
In some respects, the building process itself helped. Amagansett’s stringent architectural regulations required the exterior to be approved long before the interiors were fully developed; by the time work progressed, the clients had become parents and their needs had changed. Slightly eccentric window positions, changes in ceiling height and other spatial quirks initially presented challenges, but ultimately gave the house something the designers had been seeking all along: the pleasing irregularity of a building that appears to have evolved over time.
Elsewhere, age was introduced more deliberately. Salvaged architectural elements and reclaimed materials appear throughout the house, their patina softening the precision of new construction. One particularly serendipitous find was a set of enormous Victorian fretwork transoms, spotted by Jess and Jonathan while passing a mansion mid-demolition. Unsure at first where they might go, the pair reworked the transition between the kitchen and family room around them. What could easily have been an incongruous addition instead became one of the house’s defining details - the sort of architectural eccentricity that feels inherited rather than imposed.
Nowhere is this balance between character and contemporary family life more apparent than in the primary bathroom. Although conceived as the principal ensuite, Jess and Jonathan envisaged it as a space for the whole family: generous, tactile and relaxed, with the easy atmosphere of a beach house.
It was this combination of presence and practicality that also drew them to Drummonds. The fittings bring a reassuring solidity to the room, their traditional craftsmanship particularly suited to an interior in which material character is so important. “There is a weight and permanence to them that you really experience when you use them,” the designers explain. “We wanted those qualities to elevate the ordinary rituals of a bathroom and make them feel like a moment.”
At the bath, the retractable hand shower disappears neatly away when not in use, avoiding a trailing hose across the bath or deck. It is a modest detail, but one that makes a tangible difference to the everyday experience of the room - exactly the sort of consideration that runs throughout the house.
The clients have since told Jess and Jonathan that the bath has become one of their favourite places in the house. For all the thought given to patina, permanence and a sense of history, this is ultimately a house designed to be lived in - and to gather its own stories over time.
