By Meg Barone
CORRESPONDENT
The name of the road — Hulls Highway — is deceiving enough, but then so is the house at 940 Hulls Highway in the Southport section of Fairfield.
Both can fool you in the best possible way. Despite its name, Hulls Highway is a quiet, rural road that meanders passed a mélange of stately homes and properties with horses; and despite its appearance, the colonial saltbox house looks like it was built in the 18th century.
At first glance, the house appears authentic, but the custom-built reproduction saltbox was actually built in 1979 with yesterday’s details and today’s amenities. It is accurate in many of its architectural details, yet it is not museum-like. The current owners are history buffs and wanted to have the feel of living in that time period, but with the built-in comfort of the modern era. They used J. Frederick Kelly’s book “Early Connecticut Architecture” as their construction bible to create their masterpiece.
The 3,634 square-foot house was meticulously designed as a quintessential 1750 classic New England saltbox and painstakingly appointed with chestnut beams, wide planked walnut floors on the first floor, pediment, colonial wall paneling, period-looking light fixtures including brass sconces, and hand-wrought vintage hardware on exterior doors. To lend a real air of authenticity, the owners had light switches in some rooms installed in closets to hide them, since there was no electricity in the 1700s.
The colors that the owners incorporated into the décor are close to the colors that would actually have been used in colonial times. The house sits well back from the road, and the front of the nearly two-acre property along the road is lined with a fieldstone wall, which was so typical of colonial Connecticut farm land. There is a long pebble driveway that passes the open meadow of the front yard and stands of trees eventually leading to the house and the three-car attached garage, both of which are natural-colored wood clapboard with an antique blue-green trim. The two side-by-side front doors have numerous raised panels and are beautifully framed in decorative millwork.
The doors open into a small foyer with a double-door closet. To the left is the formal living room or parlor and to the right is the formal dining room. The parlor has one fully paneled wall, which houses the red brick fireplace. The rest of the walls have the paneling on the lower quarter. The homeowners said they interviewed seven masons before finding one who could build the fireplace authentically. The interior bricks are new and the outer portion comprises reclaimed bricks to provide that antique appearance. The dining room has a fieldstone fireplace, exposed beams, paneling on the lower walls, and two built-in corner cupboards.
A door separates the dining room from the family room, or keeping room, which opens into the small but well-laid-out gourmet kitchen. In fact, one of the current owners is a professional chef and culinary instructor. And if that’s not enough to convince someone of its function and efficiency, how about this? Shortly after this house construction was completed, the kitchen garnered national attention.
It was featured on the front cover of a special edition of Family Circle magazine in 1981. The keeping room is really almost like three rooms in one. It runs the length of the house from side to side and includes a sitting area, a main area with a fieldstone fireplace and hearth just outside the dining room, and a den or library section with lots of built-in bookshelves. This latter section can also be accessed through the living room. The lintel over the fireplace is a reclaimed beam found on Jennings Beach. A large barn-like door from the keeping room to a spacious barn room has 15 panes — three rows of five — of bull’s-eye glass. This room has a brick floor in a modified herringbone pattern, hand-hewn chestnut beams, a skylight, antique wet bar, rough sawn pine wood paneled walls and two bay window seating areas overlooking the stunning backyard, which is more like a small-scale botanical garden.
There are two French doors from the porch to a slate patio and into the yard. At the opposite end of the porch there is also a pass-through window into the kitchen. The kitchen has a red brick floor, also in a modified herringbone pattern, a vaulted ceiling, skylight, and a backsplash of ceramic tile with some hand-painted floral tiles. The counters are topped with butcher’s block wood. There is a deep and long stainless sink and the appliances are hidden for the most part behind cupboards that resemble those of the colonial period. Appliances include a Viking six-burner range top, two Jenn-Air wall-mounted ovens, and a Sub-Zero refrigerator.
Back in the keeping room, at the library end of it, there is an L-shaped hallway with doors to the slate patio.
This area provides access to the basement, garage and a powder room with plaster walls. These plaster walls have sheetrock underneath and are meant to continue the vintage feel.
The plaster walls continue up the stairs to the second floor. At the top of the stairs and to the left is a laundry room with under-eaves storage and access to an unfinished room over the garage, which looks out over the slate patio, rose garden and the panoramic view of the large yard with its mix of formal gardens, meadow and landscaping that includes clipped boxwood hedges, quince trees and other plantings. There is also a pergola with benches and a wood-shingled roof. This room, once finished, would make an ideal guest room or art studio.
There are three bedrooms on the second floor, including the master bedroom suite, and another two bedrooms on the third floor with a sitting area between them. The bedroom windows all have interior shutters — not plantation shutters, but full-length, attractive solid wood shutters. Above each window is decorative millwork. Each bedroom has a California closet, and pine wood floors that were installed in 2001.
For more information, or to set up a private appointment to see the house, call Melanie Smith of Prudential at 203-319-3403 or 203-521-2126.
