- Where
- Chautauqua Lake, New York
- Type
- New custom house
- Inside
- Great room, open kitchen, primary suite, loft, guest and kids’ rooms
- Service
- Lake houses and residential
A new house that looks like it has always been on the lake.
A young couple from Cleveland with two small children bought a lakefront lot at Chautauqua Shores and asked for a brand new house: crisp, black and white, and easy to keep up. Craftsman houses have stood on Chautauqua Lake for a century, so the house takes the peaked roofs, the deep overhangs and the trim of that tradition and opens up the rooms the way a family lives now.
The whole living, kitchen and dining space looks out at the lake, with a stone fireplace and arched built-ins at one end and a kitchen island that looks straight through the dining table to the water. The primary suite sits on the main floor, with a back to back fireplace shared with the living room and a lake view from the bed, and an office that can be a bedroom beside it. Upstairs there is a bunk room over the garage, two more bedrooms with lake views, a playroom with the best view in the house, two baths and the laundry. A full basement was part of the ask, which is not a given this close to the lake, and the firm made it work.
The firm did the interior design with the owners’ family and its own designer, Anna Gartland: white oak floors, white cabinetry, brass hardware, and tile in every bath that stays out of the way of the view. The outside is as close to maintenance free as it can be. Alexander Construction built it, and the house finished in 2023.
We are grateful for the team at Harrington Architecture for helping us create an amazing home that we will enjoy for generations to come.
The house, room by room.
Building new on the lake?
From where the house sits on the lot to the last built-in, the firm designs lake houses meant to be lived in year round. Tell us about the lot.