Text by Mary Forsell • Styling by Kathy Curotto • Photography by Gridley & Graves

Let’s say you have your heart set on finding a beach cottage, but you’ve fallen in love with a formal 19th-century house in the middle of a fishing village.
   If you’re Tom Viertel, producer of such celebrated Broadway revivals as Company and The Fantasticks, you simply do what you’ve always done—reinvent the past.
   “The challenge became how to marry the two ideas and moods,” Tom says. “We wanted a relaxed vacation house, but didn’t want to disrespect the house’s Greek Revival origins.”
   For his partner, Pat Daily, executive vice president of a Broadway ticket sales company, the house represented more than just a getaway from Manhattan. “I was a Navy brat and was constantly moving. I’d always wanted to come from a place like this, where nothing ever seems to change.”
   The couple tread lightly while renovating, keeping the house at a compact 2,000 square feet. Rather than build out, they looked up, raising the roof five feet and replacing a 1960s addition with a new one in the same style.
   “What I really love is that every space is used,” Tom says. “When I see these McMansions with bonus rooms, I always wonder what people do with rooms 15 through 17.”