Alyse Archer-Coité knows design. This is evident in her work: as an editor at several independent print and digital art and interior design titles; as the former program director of the defunct architecture and urbanism incubator A/D/O in Brooklyn; and now at Apple, where she leads research for the tech titan’s industrial design team.
What she didn’t know until recently was what it would mean to move full-time from Brooklyn to the hamlet of Poughquag, New York, two hours north of the city, aside from the obvious allure of space and fresh air. “We had a foot of snow the day after I got the keys,” says Archer-Coité, recounting her beginnings in her stately 1770’s Georgian retreat with a hipped roof and elegant red bricks. “When the snow stopped, I realized I didn’t have a shovel. It was a very quick introduction to country life,” she adds, now laughing but with an expression that suggests the story is only funny in hindsight.
Before the storm, Archer-Coité had enlisted two friends — like-minded “city-ots,” she jokes, using a local term that’s not exactly affectionate — to help her settle in overnight. Since their car was snowed into the garage and there was no way to dig themselves out, they decided to walk. Along the route, her nearest neighbors offered to plow her driveway; They got talking about the house and a lasting friendship developed.
Making real connections easily is something of a gift for Archer-Coité, a talent she seems to have inherited from her mother Gloria, who lives in Albany an hour and a half north. It was Gloria who encouraged Archer-Coité to consider the anchoring benefits of a country home away from the hustle and bustle of the city. But it was disheartening to leave the warm embrace of familiar connections in a aging house that would take a great deal of time and effort to maintain. “The buyer’s regret came pretty quickly,” says Archer-Coité. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m a single person and I’m moving to a remote place. Is this the beginning of my Gray Gardens?’”
A friend reminded her that she had traveled to the biggest cities in the world on business and suggested that when she got home the house would be a place to spend a weekend with friends instead quick something to drink or eat typical of the city. This conversation led Archer-Coité to question her ideas about family and community in new ways. And the house complicated their answers. “I was like, ‘Who are your people really? Who is really your tribe? Who do you want to host? Who will come?’ You can just tell how much geography matters in the community,” says Archer-Coité. Interactions with close friends who are willing to make the journey and embark on a weekend together felt “more nourishing,” she adds. “The city is a sugar high.”
The house, with the four by four plan and central staircase typical of Georgian houses of the period, was built by the local Noxon family as a tavern a few years before the American Revolution and later became a Noxon family homestead. Over the years, it passed into the hands of Noxon descendants, eventually becoming the fixer-upper project of a couple who embraced the house’s period charms (and flaws). In 2020, when the pair sought a buyer, they felt they had found the right manager for the Archer-Coité site, who they suspected would keep the home as “strange” as they intended, rather than his to smooth rough edges.
With “nourishing” interactions as her goal, Archer-Coité’s urban and relaxed decor is a sort of mise en place: To play against the home’s symmetry and complement its original details, she layered furniture and lighting in a mix of mid-century and Modernist sensibilities alongside contemporary antiques and decorative items. For example, you can turn a corner and find a heavy metal chair with a surreal flair on a section of wide red pine floor that originally belonged to the house; On the second level of the library, an elegant Vitsœ shelving system stands a few feet away from an economical floor lamp with a rough-hewn wooden base.
On a recent visit, two high-back Shaker-style chairs were installed like artworks in the entrance hall, mounted upside down on the pegs of a wooden wall shelf that Archer-Coité found in an upstairs cupboard during a cleaning tour. “It’s very clear that the house is old,” she says, noting that she didn’t feel the need to emphasize that in the furniture and accessories. “And if you forget, the occasional mouse will remind you.”
Archer-Coité’s collection of contemporary photography — which includes works by Joshua Woods, Shaniqwa Jarvis, and Kate Friend — also helps avoid potential treasures. Rather than collecting with a specific aesthetic goal, she says, she seeks pieces that bring her joy, even if she doesn’t always immediately know where they end up. “I moved the photo of Shaniqwa Jarvis [of a swimmer] in every room of the house,” she says wryly. It now runs her home office, where she says it feels right to have a friend’s work on her shoulder.
Styled by Bebe Howorth
This story originally appeared in the May 2022 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE TO
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