You can take the family out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take Brooklyn’s urban aesthetic out of the family. Such was the case when Kathryn and Peter Mattis moved their three young children out to Greenwich, Connecticut, where they found a Georgian revival-style home that was nothing like the residence they’d left behind.
The couple had previously performed a top-to-bottom renovation of their 1898 townhouse, which they’d populated with midcentury and modern furnishings and art that contrasted nicely with the home’s original architecture and millwork. They were in no mood, however, for a fixer-upper this time, but still wanted an invigorating tension between old and new. “We wanted a house that was in great shape and to build a budget for a designer to come in and really make it stand out,” Kathryn says.
Enter designer Susan Bednar Long, who used the Mattises’ existing furniture as her starting point for a design that infused the home’s stately, traditional architecture with energy and edge. Says the designer, “To me, this house was about picking nice sculptural pieces and putting them together.”
