Property of Mr. and Mrs. Philip L. Kirkham, New Canaan, Connecticut | Architect: H. Lawrence Coggins

8/23/2025 08:27:00 PM

If rules are made to be broken, this snug little gray clapboard house in New Canaan, Connecticut, is a fine example of why. It breaks most of the rules for how to make a small house seem larger, has not even a suggestion of open planning, window walls, or multiple use of space. Like its prototype, an old house in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, it is thoroughly Colonial, frankly small and cozy. No other kind of house would have been right for Mr. and Mrs. Philip L. Kirkham, whose heritage is deep in New England's past and whose hobby is all things Colonial.

Since their children had grown up and married, the Kirkhams planned this house just to suit themselves. It is square, compact, with each room for a specific purpose and each completely closed off from the others: downstairs are the living room, dining room, kitchen, and master bedroom, convenient as a one-story house; upstairs are the guest room and bath. It is carefully authentic in every detail, and all visible materials were taken from 18th-century houses of comparable style and size. For example, the fireplaces and chimneys are laid up with small bricks, some of which show thumb prints of the workmen who made them by hand years ago. It makes only one con- cession to indoor-outdoor planning, and this in suitable New England tradition. The breezeway between house and garage is an all- purpose room six months of the year, but is known as 'the summer kitchen' and furnished accordingly: antique pine tavern table, dough box, captain's chair. It also includes a fine big fireplace.