Why Gil Schafer is Selling His Perfect Country House

I spoke with the celebrated architect about how to know when it's time to move on.

Middlefield. Photo courtesy of Gil Schafer.

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“Did you see? Gil Schafer is selling Middlefield!” someone DM’d me early one morning last week.

I don’t believe it!

Renowned for his exacting reinterpretations of historic styles, Gil Schafer of Schafer Buccellato Architects is equally admired for his stunning Hudson Valley country home, Middlefield, which helped launch his firm after he built it 26 years ago.

A bird’s eye view of Middlefield. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

Set on 45 idyllic acres, Middlefield could easily fool you into thinking it was a beautifully restored 19th-century farmhouse. The notable three-bedroom house quickly became a calling card for Gil’s work: new homes that look anything but.

The moment I heard Gil was moving on from Middlefield, I had to ask: Why now? He was kind enough to indulge me.

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Tell me the origin story of Middlefield. You built it in the 1990s?

I had been looking for an old house to buy for nearly three years, but I couldn’t find anything that felt right. In 1996, I was renting a wonderful Greek Revival house in the Smithfield Valley area in Amenia, and one day on a drive, I saw a spray-painted wood sign on the side of the road that said “For Sale: 45 acres.” So, I stopped.

It had a little stream by the road, and two posts with a chain across it. I hopped the chain and walked through the woods to find a meadow behind the trees. It was such an interesting hollow of land. I walked up to the top of the knoll and had a surprising thought: Maybe I should build a house instead.

Looking onto Middlefield. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

I was a young architect in my 30s working at Ferguson & Shamamian, and I had never built a house for myself. But the land was compelling, so I bought it—and I ended up building the house right on that knoll.

The landscape was designed by Deborah Nevins, who’s a friend and someone I worked with before. She says that houses need a sense of territory, or place, around them. I always think about that when I walk on raw land. We were on the top of that knoll, and there wasn’t so much sense of place. That’s why we created the stone walls and hedges and planted trees—to make it feel like the house had been there a long time.

Just perfection! Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

You hadn’t built for yourself before, but you must’ve been familiar with the process inside and out?

I was familiar with building wildly expensive mansions, not a smaller, elegant farmhouse! That was a learning process: How to make a Greek revival—which seemed appropriate for the Hudson Valley—and how to make it right by studying 19th-century pattern books.

Drawings by Carl Schmidt of houses in the Rochester area.

There is this wonderful historian, Carl Schmidt, who did survey drawings in the 1960s of Greek revival houses in upstate New York by Genesee County¹. I studied his drawings to realize that the designs found in 19th-century pattern books were a Platonic ideal, and the houses that farmers and carpenters actually built were simplified, vernacular versions of that. Because of Carl Schmidt’s surveys, I knew how to translate the pattern books into reality, and I developed all the moldings that way.

The dining room, which doubles as a library. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

One of the nicest things someone said to me when I completed the house was, “When did you finish the renovation?” It’s a brand new house!

How long did it take to build?

I worked with an amazing builder named Robert Bump, and he built the house for me in about 14 months. I was doing these drawings at night after hours and all by hand. Sometimes I would do freehand details and fax them over to him. This was before internet! I can’t believe we did it in 14 months, especially when I think about how long it takes me to do projects for clients now. He was amazingly patient with me, and we’ve now worked on a number of projects together.

The plan of Middlefield. Center hall with a double parlor to the right and the kitchen wing to the left. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

We broke ground in 1998, moved in February 1999, and I haven’t made any changes since.

How did the house impact your career?

It was huge, an incredible launchpad for me — I started my firm in 2002 — but I didn’t build it with that intention. When I finished Middlefield, people were immediately impressed by the look and feel of the house. It’s a classic Greek revival, but there were little tweaks that make it easier to live in, and there’s modern plumbing and electric!

The living room at Middlefield. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

For instance, I made the windows just slightly larger than what they would’ve been to maximize light. The staircase comes down in the back instead of the front so you get a nice cross axis at the front of the dining room into the kitchen, which you wouldn’t have had if the stair came down toward the front. People saw that, especially people nearby who were thinking about building a house, and a lot of work came in quickly.

We *love* a fireplace in the kitchen. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

When I was early in my career, many asked for houses in the Greek revival style because of the house and that’s what I was known for. Over time, I’ve moved beyond just doing that.

Have any of your clients asked you to design a carbon copy of the house?

No, but I have been told that because of the book, some people have made their own versions. I did have someone once say to me that they wanted my house, but in a Gothic Revival style. And I was like “Wait - what?”

The side porch and center hall. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

Do you feel any professional nostalgia letting this house go?

It’s bittersweet for that reason. Building Middlefield was such a formative moment in my life and career. So many memories with my friends and now my family were made there, not to mention living there through COVID. But — life is an evolution of things, and you have to keep going!

So, how did you know it was time to move on?

I was single for so long, and then I married Courtnay, a wonderful woman who is a decorator. We spent COVID as a family in that house, and that was the first time we started to think about if the house really worked for us, because we have kids now. The house needs to accommodate a family (multiple teenagers!), which is so different from my life when I built it as a single young architect.

One of the hedges designed to give Middlefield a sense of place. Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

Also, this house is the expression of me, my ideas, and my style—not us. It occurred to me that it would be fun if we did something together and start from scratch somewhere else. That was the impetus really to let the house go.

Life is chapters, but I believe that while change is hard—I’m a Virgo, we hate change—it’s ultimately good. In terms of my work in the office here, I love it when a project scares me because it’s new. It’s not a comfortable place to be mentally, but it tends to get better work. So I decided to take that thinking to our home.

Gil's former apartment on West 11th Street. Remember these pics... Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

Did you think about holding onto Middlefield?

If we won the Powerball, I’d say 100%! Because we didn’t, we had to let something go. Someone said to me that it’s optimistic, too, and I loved that perspective.

Do you care who buys it?

I’ve decided not to know. I told my broker, Ashley, that she has to tell whoever buys it that I will not work on it. I want to leave and preserve my memory of it.

After Gil sold the W11th St apartment, the details were removed. It was recently asking $2.8M.

Did you think about only selling to someone who wants to preserve the house as it is?

I don’t want to do that. That’s like telling the new owner that they can’t live in the house the way they want to. That’s not fair to them.

Whoever buys it will be one lucky person! Courtesy of Gil Schafer.

I had an apartment in Greenwich Village that I renovated and sold. Someone bought it, stripped out everything that I had done, and made it a white-box modern thing. It was a little hard to see that, but at the end of the day, it’s their right to do what they want with the space. I don’t want to stand in anyone’s way, but I also want to preserve my memory of the house, so it’s best to just close that chapter and not look back.

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A FEW MORE THINGS

• If you love Gil’s work as much as me, you can get more inspiration from his books: A Place to Call Home, Home at Last, and The Great American House.

• Can’t wait to see Sargent and Paris at The Met. I just love the way he paints jewelry!

• We got this accent light in bronze from Pooky, and John (a notoriously hard sell) has said it’s “everything he hoped it would be.” Now he wants the version in antique silver.

• I just ordered The Doorman, a new thriller set in a prewar building in the city.

• Red Hook Tavern’s burger might be my favorite in the city.

• The Gilded Age is returning for season 3 in just over a month! I’m going to post weekly recaps with a few guest co-hosts, and I’ve got some very fun people lined up.

1. Not too far from our place in the Finger Lakes!