Among the Ruins

Contributing to the house’s studied informality, a simple open pergola welcomes the visitor into a space more mudroom than ceremonial entry, with plenty of shelves for shoes, hats, and gloves, and closets made of painted particleboard. A 10-foot-wide bluestone sidewalk continues inside, running through the width of the house and out the other side onto the south-facing terrace. Estes wanted this bluestone to “visually tie the indoors and outdoors together”; he chose the stone for its durability and because it weathers well. The remaining floors of the first level are made from simple poured and polished concrete.

At the southeast corner, the master bedroom, inspired by the sleeping porches of Jamestown’s original cottages, features 12 feet of glass doors that slide back to let in the night sounds, including the bell buoys from the bay. Above the master bedroom rises a three-story tower, featuring a 12-by-20-foot bedroom on the third floor for their daughter, Cotton, now 22, and Estes’s study on the second. “The tower contrasts with the long horizontal of the main house. It was a way to get privacy for Cotton without using doors,” says Estes.

The east-facing wing houses the garage, Magratten’s graphic design studio (her firm, Darcy Magratten Design, focuses on book design), and a small guest room on the second floor. The glazed corners of Magratten’s office look across her large vegetable and flower garden to the remains of the greenhouse. While a few neighboring rooflines are visible in winter, the scene is framed by mature trees on all sides.

“The house is not small in scale, and I’m not much of a housekeeper,” says Magratten. “But I love that you can just walk right outdoors from anywhere in the house. Because we’re on the edge of the woods, there are always a lot of creatures out there—deer, mink, coyotes, hawks, and a tremendous bird population. It’s great to be a part of it all the time.”

The house is sheathed in gray clapboards—1-by-12-inch locally harvested standard pine—and the roof is corrugated metal. Jamestown is a short trip from Newport, where Estes and his partner, Peter Twombly, whom he met 20 years ago while studying at RISD, have their architectural practice in an old church. They design homes along Narragansett Bay based not on the Newport grand mansion model, but on the more informal and agrarian spirit of Jamestown Island, much like this lovely, simple house on the edge of a wood.