In a Contemporary Addition to a Gothic Revival Building, Compatibility is the Key

By Anne Levin | Photography by Aislinn Weidele

Contemplating retirement, Georgia Nugent and Tom Scherer decided that Princeton would be the ideal spot for their home base. Princeton University graduates with distinguished careers in academia (Nugent) and international finance law (Scherer), the couple looked forward to putting down roots in — or around — the town they knew and loved.

The hunt began in 2013. After seeing “every house in Princeton,” says Nugent, they settled on a stone Gothic Revival dwelling with 100 leaded windows, just behind the Hun School, that had served as a designer showhouse the year before. It had a distinctive pedigree — architect Alfred Hopkins had designed it for himself in 1932. But the house had been on the market for more than five years. It needed work.

We knew we had to identify an architect who did historical buildings,” says Nugent. “As it turned out, there were two we considered. One was from my [Princeton] class, and the other was from Tom’s.”

The successful candidate was Michael Mills, a classmate of Nugent’s and a principal with Mills + Schnoering Architects in Princeton. Mills did the entire renovation, inside and out. More recently, the firm returned to the Edgerstoune Road site to design an indoor pool pavilion, which is attached to the main structure by a glass passageway.

The house presented a special challenge in the original renovation, because the clients were not exactly fans of its Gothic style. But it reminded Nugent of Princeton’s Graduate College.

“It is the farthest thing from what we could have imagined for ourselves,” says Nugent. “We’re very interested in design. Our taste is mid-century modern. I felt like we had looked at every house in Princeton — a zillion. Nothing worked. But then a friend who is a realtor decided, somehow, to show us this. Tom says that I just felt like it had to be rescued. That’s partly true. But I could see the integrity of the work, and the design really spoke to me even though it wasn’t my particular style.”

Mills and his wife had actually checked out the house themselves, years before, just after marrying, at the suggestion of late architect Bill Short, with whom Mills worked early in his career.

“I don’t know how Bill thought we had the resources to buy a house in Princeton,” Mills says. “But I thought that maybe a low offer would carry the day. Actually, my wife wasn’t thrilled about the idea of taking on the house at that time. It needed a complete redo, which we ended up doing with Georgia and Tom.”

As a written description of the project from Mills + Schnoering puts it, “The design approach involved restoring and presenting the original fabric of the house as a historic backdrop to an eclectic, modern interior to showcase the owners’ collections of Italian and handmade American craft.”

Nugent was an assistant professor of classics at Princeton (the first alumna to hold a fulltime faculty position) before serving as president of Illinois Wesleyan University and Kenyon College. As a scholar of Greek and Latin, she and Scherer have spent a lot of time in Tuscany and Italy. She admired what she saw.

“In the Tuscany area, about 20 years ago, people started buying these entire farm complexes with multiple structures,” she says. “They were very old, but they’d furnish them with contemporary pieces. When we bought the house, I decided that would be my vision, too.”

The house was nothing like the midcentury modern style that Nugent and Scherer prefer. But Hopkins’ design spoke to them — inside and out.

Alfred Hopkins was “a gentleman architect” known for designing sprawling farm complexes during the Gilded Age, for clients in places like Hyde Park and Rhinebeck, N.Y.; Newport, R.I.; and Greenwich, Conn. When it came to building his own home, Hopkins had a hard time deciding on a location. He searched for 20 years before settling on Edgerstoune Road.

“Here was an acre in an arboretum with all the practical elements at hand,” he wrote in a lengthy article in a 1933 issue of House and Garden magazine. “I wandered among the trees looking at this place and that place, while the ghost of my old urge to build followed at every footstep. We had several preludial rambles in the arboretum, the ghost and I, and with each one he grew stronger and bolder … until he had sold it to me — he and the real estate man.”

Hopkins wanted a court “with four definite determined boundaries, and in it there must be the feel and sense of enclosure.” Also in the plan: “no ugly right angles.” He wrote on, “I wanted to live with structure, with bare, solid, substantial stone and mortar, inside and out, [and] particularly within did I seek the strength of rugged masonry.”

Hopkins’ penchant for engravings in the plasterwork continues to yield surprises for the owners. “It’s so quirky and fascinating,” says Nugent. “Just yesterday, Tom showed me something I’d never seen before: an elaborate carving above the outside door that opens onto the patio. In the corner on each side is a little engraving with the names of the company that did the engraving, as well as Hopkins’ name. Everywhere you turn, you find these little people or flowers in the plaster.”

The parapet stones on the exterior that Hopkins so favored required considerable work during the renovation. The maid’s room on the second floor, which had a private entrance, was turned into a larger primary bedroom suite, bath, and dressing room. All of the casement windows had to be restored by a leaded glass conservation shop.

The project, Mills says, “was kind of a revelation of a great house in Princeton that I really didn’t know that much about. I think that the massing and the materials and the relationship to the landscape were all really great.”

After the renovation, Nugent and Scherer kept in touch with Mills. The architecture firm did some additional work on the exterior and interior over the next few years. Mills traveled to New York with Nugent to pick out furniture and light fixtures. The firm designed the casework in the former music room to turn it into a library. When the couple decided to build an indoor exercise pool for Scherer, they turned to Mills again.

“It was intended to be a contemporary structure, and not taken as a part of the original house,” Mills says. “It went through a lot of iterations of what that meant for this house. It was very carefully done. We saw this as a design opportunity we wanted to be known for. It could show our philosophy that it was possible to do a new addition in contemporary materials that was different and compatible. That was the goal.”

The tiles in the pool house were designed to echo the water theme, with dark blue at the base to white at the top.

Baxter Construction was a partner in the design decisions during construction, particularly Jim Baxter, Wayne Petrini, and Ken Urion, Mills says.The written description from the architecture firm says that the new pool wing “attaches to the main structure via a glass-walled passageway that allows both new and old to stand apart and preserves their individual identities. The pool house is intentionally more delicately detailed than the main house, utilizing a lighter wood-framed construction with sustainably sourced, modified timber siding, a standing seam zinc roof, and a stucco foundation.”

The pool pavilion’s interior is lined with mosaic tile from floor to ceiling laid in a pattern that plays off the water theme, with dark blue at the base to white at the top. The building is meant to engage the surrounding landscape. At the same time, it shields the users from neighbors and the street, and opens onto the rear yard.

“The back of the building facing the lawn is [made of] very large pieces of glass, to bring the outdoors in,” says Mills. “It’s the horizon toward which Tom swims when he’s in the pool. They also have protection on the Hun School side. The park property line is very close. The Hun building is right next door, and there was a need to have some level of privacy on that side of the building. That was another thing that generated the design.”

Obtaining approvals for the project took years. Luckily, the couple were otherwise engaged with their professions. They were also understanding.

“They were great to work with, and very patient,” says Mills. “These are wonderful people.”

Nugent and Scherer moved into the house last year. “The house is a project,” Nugent says. “But we feel like it was made for us. We think it’s beautiful. And we are so impressed by the way the pool house is so connected to the architecture of the house, yet distinctly modern. Especially if you come up from the back, it’s so wonderful the way the whole composition works together.”

So what would Hopkins think?

“I think he would hate it,” Nugent says, with a laugh.

Courtyard view looking into poolhouse.