Tasteful Friends: Dutchess County, New York Country Estate Edition

Its gorgeous; but 2 kitchens? And both look pokey.

Lovely on the outside, basic as fuck on the inside. Cheap looking.

Basic as far as the interior design, R2? Because the interior detailing required some incredible craftsmanship.

The sun room, the entry, and a few other warm notes--the rest is austere and depressing, a WASP dowager in cold dudgeon.

I like it, but there's an amazing lack of color outside (except some incidental alliums - almost put there like an afterthought).

Someone doesn't like flowers. It's a waste of the outdoor potential.

I thought the same thing R5! Where are the gardens! All those hideous box hedges!

Gil used to be gay. Then he wasn’t.

Its a really gorgeous house that just begs for lovely bright rugs and plush red velvet sofas piled pillows. It screams a need for color,for life .Its so beautiful yet deadly dull. I guess you could say its got great bones. Plenty to work with without having to go whole hog redo.

Stories, R7?

I have a book on this house — yes, I am the first one to admire craftsmanship. But others are right too, lots of errors and bad choices. Waaaaaaaay too restrained for my taste.

It's pleasant, while also being pretentious and faggy.

Beautiful - love it. Would rather be on the CT side of the border but not a bad location for a weekend house for NYC. But the price is more Hamptons than Upstate/Litchfield County. The audience for that level of extravagance in that location is much more limited. But exactly what I would have if I had the money.

The outside is quite magnificent, great views and the classical look fits into the landscape nicely.

The floors on the first floor are wide boards and too light. A more classic approach would be somewhat darker herringbone. The first floor is so open that there is little wall space for paintings or portraits or other hanging art.

I hate TVs above a fireplace, and the Sun Room seems an odd place to try to watch TV, certainly until night, You're always tipping your head back-- so uncomfortable.

Bathrooms with pedestal sinks, no matter how elegant looking, aren't very functional on a day to day basis -- no place to put your product, toothpaste, etc.

As usual, there isn't a single note of an actual person with an actual life in the interior. It's just another "let's not let any personality show anywhere."

Unless, of course, this is indeed just staging. In which case...

R14-- I think it's staging. One clue is that few wall spaces have anything hung on them (and there are few such spaces on the ground floor anyway). Stagers don't like to punch holes in walls. One of the bathrooms has a couple of pics on the wall, very much related to the color palette in the room.

It's beautiful, but too "careful." One thing that sticks out to me is how many squares and rectangles are all over the place, like many-paned doors and windows, framing on the cabinet doors, wall mirrors, etc. It's distracting and vaguely annoying. I think, though, that with more lived-in, cozy decoration, that wouldn't stand out so much.

Eve would’ve loved it.

At least it doesn’t have that hideous gaudy decor tat is so popular with the mafioso/Russian oligarch type. On that basis alone it gets a 6 from me.

What's missing? A pool house with showers, changing rooms, etc., and, better entertainment area. Perhaps not an outdoor kitchen (so tacky) but some food staging area and fridge/wine cooler, etc. Are there servants' quarters?

I agree with you completely OP. It is such a classic and beautiful property. I do like some of the interior design too. Agree that a bit more warmth but at the risk of being yelled out by our chintz queens, I find Bunny Williams overwhelming and trying too hard. Something in the middle maybe.

Is the kitchen a two tone? If so, it doesn't really work. two kitchen? They seem too small--one should be better set-up for prep/entertaining.

Ugly wall paper.

The barn-style doors don't fit the rest of the motif.

It appears that there is a main kitchen and a back scullery, both done well. Barn doors? I don't see. I see planked doors that appear as if the home expanded over the years. That was likely the intent here.

R22. If you read, it's a bar area adjacent to the living room. I've gone to fab parties where the hosts had a dedicated area for the bar tenders to stage and present to guests in the larger reception area. This may be that. A floor plan would help.

A tear-down!

I'm of mixed opinion on Gil Schafer houses. At first glance they look great, the exterior proportions are good (always in a modified Greek Revival vein, a little reduced in verticality and stretched horizontally, just enough to be distinctive as his work.)

The driveway facade is very handsome and gives a sense of height and uprightness. Nothing to complain about except the fenestration of the flanking wings -- the tall windows in the hyphens to either side of the main block are off and through a wrench into the composition of the farther left and farther right wings On the rear or opposite elevation, the massed windows in the two wings would have been better as tripartite windows, or would have been fine had the ground floor if the center block not had that beach house arrangement if French doors -- pleasant to si inside and look out, but looking back at the house you wonder why the place was tarted up with all those fucking French doors onto the porch. Obviously s compromise for function and because someone was sold on the idea of having all the doors open and a big drinks party drifting in and out.

I hate the sheet glass front door. Even a house with security needs a visually secure front door, not one that looks the the door to some quaint Upstate coffee store. The stair is a nice idea but not quite elegant, and the Greek Revival style newel post is at once to thick and too thin, just as the handrail is underscaled. He fucks up on these details and proportions every time. (Maybe not every time. His own house parlor floor apartment in Greenwich Village is superb design and much more confident.)

The main rooms have the proportions and details of an early 20thC interpretation of Greek Revival. Nice, but horizontal in emphasis. The kitchen inspired a million deep glossy blue kitchens, the millwork nice, but it doesn't deliver for me. The concept is dropped fast and the result is underwhelming.

The place is very poorly furnished which does the space no favors, but it could look worlds better with decent furniture and art.

Having been a little unkind, here's a link to his own Greenwich Village parlor floor apartment which is without fault. The columns (plaster), millwork, everything was his design. It's a high style Greek Revival interior where there wasn't one.

^that apartment: gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. 100%.

R26. The furnishing are superior in his own apartment, of course. As is the millwork and the walls are a bit more contrasty, which is very nice. I'm not sure what his love of those straw mat-like carpets (sometimes as under carpets) is, though. We see those in the house in question. Mansion-sized orientals are quite cheap right now and could bring some interest into the house. I prefer the darker stained floors in his apartment, too.

Is he single? Asking for a friend.

I'm not R26, but those sisal rugs give a clean, sharp, modern contrast.

Is it too much to ask someone who has 10 million+ to buy a house to buy an OLD Greek Revival house upstate and sink some real money into it for a more elegant experience? They are all over the place and have more character than this faggy concoction.

This one in Millbrook no less was half the 15 million - 7.7 only a few years ago. and much more character.

Way too WASPy for me.

@31 THAT's more like it.

Single, R28? I think he's married or has a partner, a woman, and an interior designer -- a convenient tradition among the traditionalist American architects. (Peter Pennoyer whose work can be excellent has a designer wife, unfortunately her work is ordinary and often paired with her husband's architecture.) Madison Spencer in Charlottesville who I think does less ground-up design than these two is another good Classical architect. You can see it in his floor plans which have a clarity to them (where Schaefer's often seem to have many compromises.) Atlanta and some other spots in the U.S. South have some good Classical architects usually in a regional vein, and usually inspired by Philip Shutze and a couple of other Atlanta architects from the early 20thC.

I asked AI for a rough estimate to build a replica of Boscobel, which is a rather perfect classical American big house (barely a mansion). 3-5 million.

If we’re just talking about the house itself, no estate, no gardens, no antique furnishings: • Size: ~4,500 sq ft (a relatively modest “mansion”). • Style / Finishes: Refined but not massive — delicate Federal woodwork (swags, moldings, mantels), high sash windows, plaster details, not gilded Versailles. • Scope: Rebuilt to look period-correct with modern structure, wiring, plumbing, insulation.

2025 Build Cost (Hudson Valley region levels) • Good quality historic replica (residential standard systems): $650–$800/sq ft × 4,500 sq ft → $2.9M–$3.6M. • Museum-grade accuracy (replicated joinery, custom plasterwork, conservation-grade materials, climate-control, fire suppression): $900–$1,100/sq ft × 4,500 sq ft → $4.1M–$5.0M.

So if you stripped out the estate and collections, you’re basically looking at $3–5M to rebuild Boscobel itself today — depending on how “authentic” vs. how “livable modern” you want it.

It's no Mar A Lago...

Agree Gorgeous on the outside, but the decor and the staging suck the life out of it. However I really don't understand why the stairwell is placed right next to the front door. Makes it look more like a split level

The built-ins look bland but so many times I've thought the same thing from pictures where an expensive property's look identical to those of a cheaper one.

Big difference in quality when you see them in person. I could do a lot with it but it's too damned big.

R31: Beautiful. Even with ceilings lowered for forced air HVAC, it's elegant in a way that OP's isn't.

The bronze wallpaper in the entry is not hung very well.

I like most of it. I hate kelly green and that TV set up. The bedrooms are nice.

Cold as ice.