Rich in History

A new, family-friendly house has all the charm of a 19th-century beach cottage

When architect Patrick Ahearn, of Ahearn/Schopfer Architects in Boston, designed a family home to be built on one of the rare undeveloped beachfront parcels on Martha’s Vineyard, he started by inventing a venerable past for the residence. “The homeowners and I imagined that there was a rambling Shingle-style cottage already on the property, like the ones that dotted the New England coast in the late 1800s and early 1900s and that the surrounding houses had been wiped out in a hurricane.

South Beach Retreat was featured in Home Magazine Kitchen & Bath Section, May 2006 issue.

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