Perched on the highest ledge overlooking Sandy Cove, Oak Ledge was built in the 1880’s as a ‘summer cottage’ in quintessential Shingle Style.  140+ years later, HMA worked with the current owners to make significant sensitive, studied revisions that improved the connection to the adjoining landscape and views to the ocean. 

The project used a studied combination of innovative, contemporary materials such as wrought steel window and door systems and expressive structure to adapt a historic but dark and spartan structure into an inviting and inspiring series of family space that are adapted to contemporary life and work.  

New viewsheds to the ocean were created by carefully studying the relationship between furniture layouts, existing structure, and the style of the existing home.   Careful integration with the landscape plan resulted in a seamless flow from formal interior spaces to outdoor areas, creating light and airy feel to every room at all times of the day.  High performance wrought steel windows were carefully detailed to provide of secure sense of weather-tight comfort in the winter, while providing the opportunity to open doors and windows and provide a seamless flow to the outdoors during the best days of spring, summer and fall.  

Selected for 2026 Cohasset Historical Society House Tour  

https://www.cohassethistoricalsociety.org/events/2025housetour 

Interior Design by Owner 

Photography by Suzanne Doherty  

Building on the footprint of a previous structure in a heavily regulated plot adjoining sensitive tidal marshland, the project expanded vertically to enhance program needs.  Working with challenging permitting constraints, the project enhanced the interior sense of sweeping views beyond to Cohasset’s Little Harbor and eastward to Sandy Beach and the Atlantic Ocean.   

A proprietary blend of locally sourced wood and stone was created to match the nearby cedar and ledge outcroppings, creating a sense of regional appropriateness within an innovative vocabulary of contemporary forms.  Close collaboration with the landscape plan creates a sense of seamlessness between the interior and deck areas, providing great flow from vast exterior areas to the rooms inside.  

Walk-out and roof decks provide views in all directions while every interior space was planned to create unique framed views special natural features.  While the house has expansive windows, the rooms inside were planned to maximize privacy and to create a great variety of spaces for the varied needs of a growing family.   

This historic, late Victorian-era inspired Shingle Style icon has held a commanding presence on historic Cohasset Harbor since the 1904, but had fallen into disrepair and suffered from incremental additions and purpose-driven alterations.  The Interior Designer (Instagram@palmandprep) client/owner worked with HMA to envision a return to the original massing and to create a re-worked floor plan of signature spaces.   

 Working strategically with existing structural systems, the project adapted ‘found’ attic and basement spaces that are now considered the feature areas of the house.   The Margin Street elevation was updated to support new porch areas that lend a seamless sense of the interior to the southerly vista of Cohasset Harbor and eastward to the Atlantic ocean.   

The Point Allerton House is situated directly in front of the outcropping of ledge that hosts Boston Harbor's iconic Boston Light.  The interior plan was carefully arranged to maximize views out to the Light, and windows were carefully calibrated to optimize views from seated positions inside of the house.  
The project was a complete transformation of a modest structure on an extraordinary site.  HMA took every view, plane, horizon line and view corridor into consideration in planning the floor plan and sill height of all of the windows.  The result is a house that is extraordinary in effect for the size of its footprint.

COHASSET COMMON, COHASSET, MA

Designed to complement an existing Second Empire home adjoining Cohasset Common, this new carriage house was designed to accommodate two car bays with a composition that is meant to imply one bay.   There is an in-law suite on the second floor, and workshop and potting shed spaces as well.

HISTORIC DISTRICT TRANSFORMATION

COHASSET COMMON, COHASSET MA

HISTORIC MAIN STREET, HINGHAM, MA

Located in a secluded pastoral setting off of Historic Main Street, this home was designed to appear very traditional on the exterior and very open, airy, and loft-like on the interior.

Built for a young growing family that had formerly lived in an industrial loft in Boston, the project needed to appear traditional on the outside while providing light-bathed, crisp, and minimalist spaces in the interior.   The result is a strategy for an "urban barn," which incorporates sweeping views to the pastoral landscape, integration of collected re-claimed doors, and a soaring, open, lofty feel.

JERUSALEM ROAD TRANSFORMATION

Working within an existing nonconforming site, the project transformed a very monolithic ranch-style house into a home that captured views to the ocean and Inner Harbor from all sides.

The house is transitional in style Using locally quarried stone, with the effect of the house and implies that the house is literally rising up out of the ledge using local stone.

Features of the project included working with existing interior ledge, creating a new chimney that integrates new windows and shutter.