Design New England - May/June 2010

giving back

written by kathleen atkins • photography by greg premru

CARING CONTINUED • Nineteen years after a groundbreaking hospice opened, it moves forward in an accessible, sustainable makeover

**To support hospice residences in Massachusetts, contact the VNA Care Network & Hospice, 800-728-1862, vnacarenetwork. org. Providers in other areas can be found through the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, *nhpco.org***.

The chilton house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, made history 19 years ago when it opened as the first residential hospice in the state. After nearly two decades of providing care for the terminally ill in a homelike setting, the facility is making history again as the first hospice in New England to earn the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification.

However, throughout the $1.8 million
renovation, which took more than a year and
included a 1,200-square-foot addition, architect
Christopher Chan, co-principal of Chan Mock
Architects in Cambridge, kept one thing in mind.
“Most of these people would stay in their homes
if they could,” he says, “so we wanted to keep it
noninstitutional and cheery.”
While all the green improvements — a
geothermal heating system, low-flow sinks,
toilets, and showers, and a light-colored roof

for efficient heating and cooling — might not be immediately visible, the interior spaces will soothe any eye with their warm and inviting decor. Part of the rebuild, spearheaded by S+H Construction of Cambridge (which also donated a rainwater harvesting system), involved making the house more user-friendly. Now each of the five bedrooms has its own accessible bathroom, and there’s an elevator to the second floor.

The VNA Care Network & Hospice runs the house. When it reopened earlier this year, it was renamed the Elizabeth Evarts de Rham House, after a VNA board member who died in 2009. Jane Woodbury of the VNA says of the project, which involved fund-raisers, volunteers, donors, and the construction team: “It was a great community effort.”