Tour an 18th-Century New York Farmhouse That Was Masterfully Restored by AD100 Architect Elizabeth Roberts (2024)

Renovating a house—especially one three centuries old—comes with the careful question of how new, exactly, to push. When Manhattanites Jessica and Mark Kleinknecht bought a 1725 Colonial upstate, they looked to AD100 architect Elizabeth Roberts for the answer. Since preservation is the hallmark of her Brooklyn firm, which has worked with clients such as Ulla Johnson and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, the couple requested her signature urban brownstone treatment with one key twist—its country setting.

“We wanted to open up the walls and let in light, and I thought, Isn’t that the challenge of a brownstone too? I bet she can do it with a farmhouse!” Jessica says. “Elizabeth has a really great way of preserving the history of a house, yet modernizing it.”

The property and barn, set on nine acres of wetlands, offered everything their apartment in Tribeca did not. It had nature with lush views, just over an hour away from NYC. It had fields and creeks in which their four kids could run wild, get muddy, and catch frogs. It had six wood-burning fireplaces to curl up next to. It had a covered porch for dinners outside. But it needed new mechanics, chimneys, and windows. Most of all, it desperately needed someone to piece together the puzzle of choppy rooms with unusably low ceilings, which evolved from an initial one-room cabin.

“Houses from that age have been added on to—a lot,” Roberts explains. “Some additions create delightful rooms while some are unfortunate, creating problems to fix. My job is trying to make the home rational again.”

While working on the project, Roberts found the most unfortunate addition to be the upstairs bedrooms, which were built with ceilings so low one could barely fit a twin bed. “You just couldn’t sit up in it!” Jessica says. To remedy this situation, they raised the roofline to allow for proper bedrooms and a playroom with 10-foot pitched ceilings. On the bright side, the most delightful discovery was a vintage sunroom that had been used as a sleeping porch. Roberts saw a way to further improve upon the space, suggesting: “Let’s just put some water in there and make it a beautiful shower room!” With three sides of glass, the new primary bathroom quickly became her favorite space in the home.

Then came their big 21st-century addition: Moving the kitchen from a dark, low-ceilinged room to a sun-drenched corner of the house was a feat that yielded glowing returns. They enlarged the space to allow for a wall of windows with beautiful views, meaning Roberts was able to echo that upper sunroom effect. It “reinforc[ed] what we love about the house,” she adds. The end result is a signature Elizabeth Roberts Architects showstopper of a kitchen but done in the context of the country. In lieu of an island, a wooden farmhouse table is the gathering spot. Simple iron lighting mingles with a cotton striped sink curtain while an oversized hearth is always burning. There are also no-nonsense, easy to clean, radiant tiled floors that are as practical as they are chic.

“The kids wear their Hunter boots and come in caked in mud. A lot of mud! And that’s what’s meant to be here,” Jessica says. “I didn’t want anything too precious or fancy. No super shiny fixtures or big slabs of marble. Nothing here feels slick or pretentious.”

Even though living in an all-new, all-white modern farmhouse was never a dream for the homeowners, Jessica admits she had a fear of dark, old rooms until Roberts changed her mind. With a light new kitchen in place, the architect spun its former spot into a low-slung family room complete with moody charcoal toned walls perfect for cocooning the family on movie nights. “It went from a dark kitchen to a super cozy jewel box of a room,” Jessica says.

They warded off white paint again in the dining room after the team cut into the sheet-rocked ceiling and exposed original, imperfect beams. The contractor quieted their knee-jerk reaction to lighten them up, warning that once painted, you can’t go back. Instead, he cleaned up the warm wooden elements, revealing original axe marks and notches in the process. “He was totally right!” Jessica says. “It brought out the history, and every time I see that room I’m reminded of the original farmhouse we’re living in.”

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