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.”

Theatrical Gestures
“I grew up in the ‘50s, so a kitchen from that era seemed fun,” Tom says. “But to do a whole house in a ‘remembering the ‘50s’ style could get pretty cloying pretty quickly.” Wisely, he and Pat indulged in retro-mania here, giving other rooms a more contemporary spin. (h) Pride of the kitchen is a 1940s stove that Pat found on a shopping expedition in L.A.



(i) and (j) The blue-and-yellow palette used elsewhere in the house continues here, perked up with flashes of red from a Deco coffee pot and a pie plate with a logo reading “Mrs. Lovett’s Meat Pies.” They were gifts from Tom and his fellow producers to the cast and crew of Sweeney Todd on opening night in New York. To find out the not-entirely-wholesome ingredients of the pies, you’ll have to see the show, which is hitting the road this fall on a North American tour.

(k) No, it’s not really an old refrigerator, but a new one with a retro look. The dinette set, however, is straight out of the ‘50s, as are the window curtains, converted from a tablecloth.

For Tom, summer isn’t just about lounging at the house. It’s the time of year when his duties as board chairman of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in nearby Waterford, Connecticut, really kick in. Performers often stay at the house, so there’s plenty of traffic in the guest rooms.
   Everyone always notices and appreciates the old typewriters, radios, and other blasts from the past scattered around by Pat, whose own past is about as lively as they come (her resume includes stints as a stockbroker, actress in TV commercials, and “the first stuntwoman in New York”). “I keep these things near to reinforce a sense of the house’s history,” she explains. “They’re meant to slow things down and remind our guests that this is a place where they can relax.”

(l) In a seafoam-colored guestroom, ikat bedcovers lend an island look. Salvaged fence parts repurposed as wall art hang over the beds. (m) Detail of a vintage crazy quilt turned pillow.

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