How a Long-Ago Fire Transformed This Quincy Colonial into a Harbor Dream Home

Furniture and art from the couple’s previous South End loft, which was also designed by architect Will Ruhl, found a congenial setting in the new house. / Photo by Nat Rea

This article is from the spring 2025 issue of Boston Home. Sign up here to receive a subscription.

After several years of wintering in Key West and returning to Boston to escape the heat, humidity, and hurricanes of Florida’s summers, Gary Ritacco and his husband, Michael Hunter, were ready to change up their New England quarters. The pair had long been residents of the South End (where Ritacco once owned and ran Uniform, a popular menswear shop) and more recently had migrated to an apartment in South Boston—but this time, they were in search of a freestanding home with a yard rather than another condo. They were also eager to undertake a new project with architect Will Ruhl, principal of Watertown-based Ruhl Jahnes, who had worked on the couple’s two previous residences. “We knew we would find something for us and him to design together,” Ritacco recalls.

And indeed they did, at the end of a Sunday afternoon Ritacco and Ruhl spent visiting properties in Squantum, that northernmost little blob of Quincy poking out into Boston Harbor. An unassuming gambrel Colonial, the house was small and appeared to have had few improvements made to it since the 1940s or 1950s. Yet it sat right on one edge of the peninsula, elevated above a rugged granite retaining wall and facing the panoramic sweep of Boston’s skyline—giving it, in the two men’s eyes, distinctly promising possibilities.

Although a major renovation wasn’t originally in the plan, exploratory demolition revealed evidence of an extensive fire sometime in the past, meaning that the home’s second level would need to be reframed. Unwelcome as the news was, “it gave us the opportunity to do what we wanted to do, completely,” Ritacco says. Both clients and architect took full advantage, refining, simplifying, and enhancing efficiency from top to bottom.

The open kitchen’s peninsula was designed to allow seating on both sides while leaving plenty of workspace for the cook. A broad window lets in light and furnishes a fine backyard view. / Photo by Nat Rea

Ritacco and Hunter wake up to this amazing vista every morning. The organic shape of the Porcelanosa soaking tub was chosen to rhyme with the oval settee on the left. / Photo by Nat Rea

Ruhl removed walls downstairs to create a single flowing space for living, dining, and cooking—harking back to the couple’s South End loft—while squeezing in a compact guest suite and a second-level office. Since Ritacco and Hunter are frequent entertainers, the lower floor was set up to accommodate a crowd. A four-panel sliding glass door replaced the oddly puny bay window that had formerly occupied the street-side wall, allowing walk-out access to a front deck overlooking the water. The open kitchen’s distinctive palette of materials, including a gray-toned wood veneer, high-gloss yellow lacquer, and a dramatic black-and-white engineered quartz, repeats in a built-in surround for the TV and fireplace. “When it’s just the two of them, it’s got these comfortable seating areas here and there; when they have a huge party, it’s ready for that,” Ruhl notes.

Upstairs, the architect removed part of the attic to extend the couple’s bedroom all the way to the roof, making space for a broad bay window accompanied by two smaller companions: the first a low rectangle that provides a horizontal view of Boston from a soaking tub stationed in one corner, the other a vertical slot that frames a slice of water, city, and sky as you walk in. Seen from the outside, the three openings form a quirky composition, asymmetrical but balanced, to spice up the home’s front façade.

“We knew we wanted a dark house,” says owner Gary Ritacco, “and I love blue.” The inky yet eye-catching shade finally chosen—Benjamin Moore’s “Washington Blue”—is historically appropriate for New England. / Photo by Nat Rea

The upstairs office has its own small bathroom, outfitted just as cheerfully as the rest of the home. / Photo by Nat Rea

The couple’s dressing room also functions as a connector between their bedroom and bath. The sleek floor-to-ceiling cabinetry matches similar installations in other parts of the house. / Photo by Nat Rea

Vivid blue-purple quartz panels from Porcelanosa completely wrap the primary bathroom and its splendidly roomy five-by-eight-foot curbless shower. The sloped ceiling leads to a crowning skylight. / Photo by Nat Rea

Consistency was a major design goal. Built-ins in the same style as the ones downstairs appear again in the principal bedroom and dressing room. (All of the home’s cabinetry and millwork was executed in partnership with the Miami and Boston showrooms of the Italian kitchen company Scavolini.) Pendant lights used above the kitchen island and in the bathrooms are all of the same type. And, of course, there’s the most prominent through line: color. Blue is counterpointed with yellow and orange, vibrantly on the home’s exterior, and dialed back to more soothing, muted shades indoors. For Ritacco, the combined hues tie the house to the major elements of its environment: sun, water, and sky.

The completed home serves its inhabitants admirably and reflects their playful spirit. Meanwhile, the duo and their friends have fallen in love with the character and easy accessibility of their Squantum neighborhood (which Ruhl calls “this magic little place”). As for the house itself, “it sometimes feels like we’re renting someone’s fabulous Airbnb,” Ritacco reports. That sounds like a successful getaway, indeed.

Photo by Nat Rea

Viewfinder

Architect Will Ruhl cleverly gave the upstairs home office a city view (straight toward Hunter’s work office in the Hancock Tower, as it happens) by adding an internal window into the stairwell that aligns with a skylight piercing the lower slope of the gambrel roof.

Architect + Interior Designer Ruhl Jahnes