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IN SUMMER BY THE SEA: COTTAGES FROM WATCH HILL TO LITTLE COMPTON, ARCHITECT THOMAS A. KLIGERMAN CELEBRATES 16 timeless, well-loved SUMMER cottages along THE RHODE ISLAND COASTLINE, INCLUDING HIS OWN IN the town of WEEKAPAUG. IN THIS EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT, HE SHARES ONE OF HIS FAVORITES, BAYSIDE, IN WATCH HILL.
For years, I have ridden my bicycle past this house, which sits on a corner wedged into a slope in Watch Hill. Shading the house from the morning sun is a two-hundred-year-old gnarled silver maple as gray as the weathered cedar shingles that wrap this gambrel-roofed cottage. The property is just under two acres and runs down the hill to a dock that gives on to Foster Cove.
Homespun character: white furniture and house trim painted with the same brush. On this side of the front porch, a hammock invites napping or lounging with a good book.
READ MCKENDREEWhen the house was built in 1900, it was half its current size, with porches that wrapped the north, east, and west sides. A wealthy New Haven banker nearly doubled its size by enclosing a number of them, creating a veritable lexicon of outdoor spaces—screened, glazed, or simply covered. In one case, he created a grander dining room that expands onto the front porch, adding walnut paneling and finely detailed wood beams.
Multiple porches—glazed, covered, and screened, something for every activity—wrap this house. This nook offers a perfect spot for game-playing on rainy days or evenings.
Read McKendree
On the other side of the front porch, white painted wicker furniture, including a cushioned chaise, invites conversation and perhaps a gin and tonic.
Read McKendreeThree generations have lived in this house, a family with an appreciation for great design and an array of residences in other beautiful places: Bar Harbor, Palm Beach, and, on Philadelphia’s Main Line, one designed by architect Horace Trumbauer. The current owner’s mother bought the house in 1945 without consulting her husband. It was for sale for the grand sum of $10,000, but the realtor suggested that an offer of $8,400 would carry the day. Since her husband was serving in Hawaii at the end of the World War II, her father purchased the property. She set about modernizing the house, notably by refinishing the dark-green walls of the living room with a wash of white and apple green. The liming still graces the room today, although slightly faded to a blue-gray.
The living room, like many of the first floor rooms, opens onto a porch.
Read McKendree
A wash of white and apple green over dark blue brings a driftwood character to the living room paneling.
Read McKendree“The details and imperfections remind you that someone pieced the house together by hand, board by board, nail by nail.”
Thomas Kligerman
Time and ocean air have softened the dining room’s unfinished wood walls and ceiling, a warm wooden embrace for candlelit dinners.
Read McKendreeThe formality of the first floor is tempered by low ceilings and simple, unvarnished woodwork. Vestiges of the past are still alive, offering a glimpse into a privileged life of years ago, one of housemen, maids, and housekeepers. The butler’s pantry is a long, narrow corridor, lined with glass-fronted cabinets filled with dishes and glassware befitting a house of this scale. The kitchen has been lightly modernized and opens to a drying porch and the stairs leading down to the backyard and dock beyond.
A Campari-red console, surrounded by dancing olives, is the house bar, tucked beneath the stairs.
Read McKendree
Colorful, mismatched chairs speak to the owner’s whimsical take on what was once a formal, staffed kitchen.
REED MCKENDREEWhat I love about this house is that it so closely reflects the personality of its owners. There is wonderful exuberance in the selection of wallpapers throughout the house. The bedrooms are appropriately papered in florals, floor to ceiling. One bathroom has a jazzy travel poster paper, popping in yellows and blues. But my favorite is the wallpaper of pimento-stuffed olives that dance behind the bar, a space tucked under the main stair, frequented by the younger generations summering in town. It’s made more festive by a 1960s vintage Pschitt! poster tacked to the door. On it, a smiling young woman holds a bottle of the French soda.
The greens of summer pervade the house in wallpaper, old-fashioned bedspreads, paint, and flowers.
Reed McKendree
In a bathroom, the wallpaper riffs on vintage travel posters in yellow and blue, while antique bath fixtures, a diamond-paned casement window, and even a scale, are genuine originals.
Read McKendreeI worry about the future of houses like this, and I am relieved that this one is so loved. It is still a summer house with no insulation, single-glazed windows, and the occasional squeak in the floor. Like so many from the past, this house combines cool dark interiors with life lived outdoors on breezy or sun-dappled porches. These idiosyncrasies lend warmth and character—a personality that is difficult to capture in a new, well-insulated, airtight building. It connects to the soul of Watch Hill and a simpler time. The details and imperfections remind you that someone pieced the house together by hand, board by board, nail by nail. Here’s to old buildings and the history they keep.
Excerpted from Summer by the Sea: Cottages from Watch Hill to Little Compton (Monacelli, 2026) by Thomas A. Kligerman, with photographs by Read McKendree.
