Northshore Magazine

an everyday sort of home. Architectural details draw the eye, beginning with a beautiful drum ceiling in the front foyer. The drum ceiling, just beyond the entry's mahogany door, crowns a round foyer with a striking black and white checkerboard marble floor. The ceiling has seven arches or "fins"—think spokes of a wheel—that connect to the other first floor rooms. A mudroom, powder room, and coat closet are tucked out of sight, allowing the house to be formal when it needs to be. The number seven is purposeful—Tittmann wanted asymmetry. The space, he says, "is not meant to be static; it's meant to flow through. It's purposefully asymmetrical." The living room, with a spacious Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago love to be outdoors, kayaking in the cove and having summer meals on the patio. "Rocksyde [tries] to look at the way a modern family lives and lets the house be shaped [accordingly]," Tittmann says. "It's very informal living in a way. In most grand houses, you don't have the kitchen right between the living room and dining room." It's not to say that Rocksyde is GRand estate Originally located on Manchester-by-the-Sea's Smith Point, Kragsyde was designed by the prominent architectural firm Peabody & Stearns in 1882 for wealthy Bostonian George Nixon Black, Jr . The house is an examples of the Shingle style, a popular American architectural style influenced by Great Britain's Arts & Crafts Movement established by English designer William Morris as well as the resurgence of interest in Colonial Revival architecture sparked by the 1876 Centennial World's Fair. Architectural historian Vincent Scully decribed the house as "[Peabody & Stearns] one great masterpiece of the early 1880s. Peabody & Stearns, to my knowledge, never created a house of such quality." The rambling organic shingle-clad house with Richardsonian arch pushed the limits of design for the firm. (They went back to designing Colonial Revival houses in New England.) Frederick Law Olmsted designed the property's grounds. The Nixon Black family spent May to October in the seaside getaway until George's death. The house was demolished in 1929 (one year after Nixon Black's death) by the Pierpont Stackpole family after they purchased the property. On Kragsyde's foundation, they built a stucco house, which was razed in the 1950s. 160 KJ Mar14 FERocksyde.indd 160 1/16/14 3:19 PM

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