So began a rather lengthy design process. “As a designer, I’m a difficult client,” Moscowitz admits. After toying with very modern ideas, Moscowitz hired Clay Benjamin Smook of Smook Architecture & Urban Design to devise a more traditional plan. She showed the resulting drawings to an architect friend in New York — Arthur “Woody” Pier of Pier, Fine Associates — who merged traditional with modern and fine-tuned the project’s scale with respect to the couple’s 1930s bungalow. Ultimately, Moscowitz worked with Robert Curatola of Rockwood Custom Building on further refinements during construction.
For Moscowitz, who lived in the United Kingdom for many years, her vision riffed on old terrace houses later graced with contemporary additions to offer indoor/outdoor living. “The best solution was to do a garage that mirrors the bungalow as the old, with an attached contemporary studio that had the indoor/outdoor elements I wanted,” the homeowner says.
The roofline of the shingled garage indeed echoes that of the bungalow. Inside there are two lifts that each accommodate two cars, yet the space still feels airy. “This is very much a working garage,” Moscowitz says. Here, the couple gained 600 square feet for parking, and an additional 30 square feet of office space. Schnurr spends his free time restoring vintage vehicles to be period correct, but Moscowitz’s design influence is evident, too. A pair of silk-screen prints in DayGlo colors — mint-condition posters from dealership windows — hang high on one wall, and a giant script sign for the Thermopane window company flows across another. “The sign once belonged to the lawyer who sued the company after their windows started falling out of the Hanco*ck Tower,” she says.
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The scale of the attached, 400-square-foot studio — which has a modern form, vertical siding, and a standing seam metal roof — is petite but the interior feels voluminous. A white oak table, where Moscowitz spreads out projects and hosts workshops with local makers, sits in the center under a skylight and Ravenhill Studio chandelier. A rolling ladder accesses the desk in the loft, and underneath, a Murphy bed hides within a shelving unit. A mini-kitchen is tucked into a niche, a feature the couple added after Needham changed its in-law apartment bylaw.
Moscowitz preserved a big, blank wall for art. Her fellow graphic designer, friend, and gallerist Susie Nielsen of Farm Projects in Wellfleet helped her curate it. The arrangement includes pieces from local galleries (including Pulp in Holyoke and Gateway Arts in Brookline) and local artists (Rose Olson, Nancy Berlin, and Bailey Bob Bailey to name a few), as well as works by Nielsen and Moscowitz themselves and by Moscowitz’s late husband, Tim Moore.
The studio’s most defining (and expensive) feature is the NanaWall: a glass accordion door that opens an entire corner of the studio to the outdoors. “Many people who incorporate these have an ocean view, but it really accomplishes the indoor/outdoor living I wanted,” Moscowitz says. “We pull the table onto the wraparound deck for entertaining.”
Thanks to the overhang, the wall can remain open in the rain. If mosquitoes become intolerable, the party can retreat to the screened porch on the back of the bungalow. (The deck abuts a granite patio with new stairs to the screened porch.) The grill rolls in and out from a storage space below the porch. “The studio and deck are an extension of the house,” Moscowitz says. “We reworked the outdoor space between them to make sure they are well-integrated.”
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Even the everyday garage beneath the bungalow connects to the new structure via a quirky walkway of mixed granite cobblestones and reclaimed stone. “I envisioned an art project in stone,” Moscowitz says. “Our stoneworker was willing to experiment.”
While the couple initially referred to their project as the “he shed/she shed,” these days they call it “The Pony” after a bar called the Red Pony on the television show Longmire. “They answer the phone with ‘It is a beautiful day at the Red Pony and continual soirée,’” Moscowitz says. “It kind of fits.”
Resources
Architects: Pier, Fine Associates, pierfine.com; and Smook Architecture & Urban Design, smookarchitecture.com
Builder: Rockwood Custom Building, rockwoodcustombuilding.com
Hardscape: Stone Work Construction, stoneworkpro.com
More photographs
Marni Elyse Katz is a contributing editor to the Globe Magazine. Follow her on Instagram @StyleCarrot. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.
