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New Brunswick House |
This house is in New Brunswick, Canada, in St Andrews, near the St. Stephens border crossing. It faces Maine across the tidal estuary, and an island where Champlain wintered four hundred years ago, and where Churchill met secretly with Roosevelt to try to bring the United States into the Second World War. The deep site extends from the road into St. Andrews, west to the water’s edge. The drive parallels a hedgerow, descending slowly through a pasture, and passes a new tennis court, and an existing orchard. There is a break in the woods where the first oblique views of the house show water far behind the chimneys and upper roof, the house still well below the drive at this point. The driveway crosses the site to the north and emerges again from the woods with an oblique view of the house from the other corner, this time from a lower vantage point. The pool, on a terrace above the house, is in the foreground more or less level with the drive. |
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As you pull even with upper level parking and the entry garden, the garages are hidden around a final bend in the drive, below a stone retaining wall. The house is approached diagonally on this intermediate terrace. A north porch is in the foreground, still hiding the servicing of the house on the lowest terrace. The house presents a slightly eccentric one and a half stories upon approach a contrast to the higher more symmetrical down slope elevation facing the water. A long high brick wall separates the entry garden from the upper pool terrace. Public rooms are all downstairs and all rooms face the water and open onto a recessed water side porch. The large kitchen also faces the entry garden and has continuous windows to the morning light. Service rooms are off a small back hall, off the service porch. All the five bedrooms are upstairs and extraordinary care has been taken to give them all great views (four to the water) and privacy, even though they all open off a single hall. Closets and baths serve to give proximate bedroom aural privacy so they can all look at the water as though they were alone in the house. |
