Oyster Harbors Family Enclave

Oyster Harbors Family Enclave

A 6,200-square-foot single-family residence in the gated community of Oyster Harbors, Osterville, completed in 2022. The brief was a year-round house that could absorb a steady flow of summer guests without losing its sense of intimacy when the family was on its own.

The site is a 1.21-acre island lot, set well back from the street so the house has room to breathe on its approach. Mature trees on the other three sides give privacy from the neighbors without walling the property off. Oyster Harbors is an island community, and the breezes and light here register as island, but the character of the place is quieter than Edgartown - less performance, more a working family compound that happens to be on the water.

The plan is organized around a central kitchen and great room that open directly to a screened porch and pool deck - the working core of the house in entertaining season. The first-floor primary suite sits on the opposite end of the house from the public rooms, giving the owners a quiet zone they can retreat to without leaving the main level. Secondary bedrooms are tucked further into the plan, separated from both the primary suite and the gathering spaces. Above the garage, a finished hangout space gives kids and guests somewhere to land on a rainy day.

Ceilings throughout the main level are 8 feet, but architectural beams and cased openings make the rooms read taller and define each space without closing it off. The dining room and family room sit just off the kitchen and open onto the backyard, so sightlines run cleanly from one room to the next.

Outside, gathering happens in three different registers. A screened porch off the great room handles smaller, quieter evenings. A bluestone deck wraps the pool for sun. A pergola off the pool cabana shelters twilight dinners.

The exterior carries a more formal posture than the rest of our Osterville work. The front facade is white clapboard, the rest of the house transitions to traditional cedar shingles with white trim, and the shutter colors are pulled toward a more formal register - closer to historical Cape palette than to the looser colors we use on family-side elevations elsewhere. The chimneys are veneered in Boston Blend stone, and the cupolas carry illuminated carriage lights that read across the lot at dusk.