52 DIGS.NET
| 2.25.2022
P R O F I L E | M R A R C H I T E C T U R E
very different from Jonathan Bay, the original owner of this house."
From the outside, Upstate House II gives no indication that
Mann, a virtuoso of the modern form with dreams of doing an
all-concrete home one day, might live there. Built in 1782, the
house is a fine example of Hudson Valley Federal style with
its handsome brick façade and the classicized formality of a
columned entrance. The home's first stab at modernization, in
the Greek Revival style, came in the 1830s; a second overhaul of
consequence conducted in the 1930s gave the house additional
bathrooms, miscellaneous cabinetry and a heating system.
Basing his revisions on these past restorations, "I did not want to
lose the layering of the previous alterations—I simply wanted to
add my own adjustments," says Mann, who commenced his own
overhaul of the house with rigor and a sense of the present. He
rebuilt most of the main staircase to what it was originally, moved
the rear door in the foyer to be in perfect alignment with the formal
front entrance, and restored the original plaster crown mouldings
that had been removed in the 1930's to make way for glass-
paned French doors. He installed a new primary bathroom in what
was most likely servants' quarters and, in so doing, opened up
a previously sealed fireplace, as well as finished the entire attic
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floor to use as a large extra guest room. Mann also expanded
and enhanced the existing kitchen.
In steering the project from what might easily have become a
static period house dripping in antiquity and ornament, Mann
achieved something truly fresh—a confrontation of the space
in between old and new. It's Mann now. And Mann a little less
monochrome, with artwork throughout the house punching up an
interior painted a modern white to highlight the austerity of the
antique structure. The art is personal, and Mann chalks up its
selection to "aesthetics, logic, humor, nostalgia, attitude, history,
geography and any one of a number other rational—and a few
irrational—impulses." Highlighting his flair for anecdote, Mann
conducts a methodically inventoried tour of the house's art
archive, starting with "a wonderful little work by Feliz Gonzales
