The most important change brought the kitchen
from the north corner of the house to the southeast side.
“In the original kitchen,” says Cory, “there was no way
to relate it to the outside.” Connecting it to the outdoors
was a priority, so the couple decided to move the room.
They expanded what had been a study with a 6-by-12-
foot addition and then worked with Rosemary Porto,
principal of Luxury Kitchens in Boston, on the layout
and details of the modern design.
“The reason this room is so remarkable is partly because of the vision that they had to put a contemporary,
sleek kitchen in a Victorian house and make it work,”
Porto says. “Susan can really integrate and modernize a
traditional house and make it look right. A lot of people
in New England are resistant to that.”
“There were a lot of tricky functional issues involved,” says Cory, “but aesthetically, we wanted it to all
look inevitable.”
Sun pours through copper-roofed bay windows and
bounces off the kitchen’s marble countertops and stainless steel appliances, and the new Dutch door opens to
a garden terrace popping with petunias, impatiens, and
hydrangeas. The colorful floral hues, along with the
summery slap of a screen door, make the urban outdoor
space feel personal and pastoral.
The plan also had the living and dining rooms switch
frosted-glass windows above the staircase are among
the welcoming features of the light-filled foyer. A window
seat (above, left) is built into the kitchen’s breakfast
nook. In the dining room (above, center), the table is
centered in the turret while cherry bookcases with white
trim (above, right) surround Cory’s workstation.
