Midcentury modern addition

A whole new floor, without touching the one everyone loved.

The house is a classic piece of 1950s modern design on the Chautauqua grounds: low and wide, with glass facing the lake. The owner needed more room for family and guests but did not want to lose any of what made the first floor worth keeping. The owner asked for a second floor with guest bedrooms, a bunk room, a recreation room, and an office, plus somewhere to eat outside with the lake in front of you.

The answer was to build up, not out. The new floor sits right on top of the first, within the same outline, and borrows its look: long flat roofs, deep overhangs, long rows of windows, the same pattern of wall and window. From the street and from the water the addition looks as if it had always been part of the house. Inside, the original first floor is untouched.

The second-floor covered terrace, with the kitchen, office, and recreation room opening onto it, is the room the whole project was built around. It looks straight out over Chautauqua Lake.

The design was reviewed and approved by the Institution’s Architectural Review Board, which weighs every addition on the grounds against the character of the existing building and its neighbors.