Study Hall
Perhaps the most striking transformation is the interior of the
barn, a storage space and a garage Peixinho repurposed into
an auxiliary living room and study. After removing debris, he
fitted the barn doors with thick screens and added a large
window. Originally, the space was without power.
“I thought it would be really charming to have oil lamps and
candles,” he jokes, but his experiment in Luddism ended by the
third year.
The barn — and the schoolhouse, as a whole — required a
wellspring of vision and elbow grease. But the renovations are
long complete, and Peixinho recently put the property on the
market with Lila Delman to focus on his next big project.
“I love it, I’m just spending more and more time in South
County,” where he is renovating the circa-1691 Samuel Clarke
Farmhouse, one of the state’s oldest surviving structures. The
farm’s aesthetic may differ from the Middletown schoolhouse
— and the Gilded Age mansions and contemporary homes his
firm designs and manages — but Peixinho’s approach is
always the same: “A house or a room or a space will talk to you,”
he says, “and you have to do whatever it asks.” �
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