Creating Beauty As He Goes
Builder E.M. Rose combines fresh ideas, lifelong passion and the finest materials to fashion a home of eminence
BY ERIKA ALEXIA TSOUKANELIS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER KOLK
Since beginning his career nearly thirty years ago, Eric M. Rose has completed building projects in nine states and three countries. Although he is best known for building custom multi-million dollar estate projects, he applies his same workmanship to meticulously detailed garden sheds and custom-built wine cellars. He has received numerous HOBI and Homebook Awards, has been interviewed by The New York Times, has been featured by the Public Television Small Business School, and has entered several corporate partnerships. His recent efforts include the construction of a three-level English Country masterpiece on Longneck Point Road in Darien, designed by Moisan Architects of Woodbury. While EM Rose Building Company was not the only talented entity involved in the building of the home, Rose takes special pride in his weighty contribution to the project. Standing on the expansive back terrace of the Darien property, he looks at the stone beneath our feet and begins to tell the story of his extraordinary endeavor. “Before we were done laying this flagstone,” he says, “the quarry in China closed.”
Rose battled to locate a source that could find a substitute for the missing material. He employed the services of Sargeant Stoneworks of New Fairfield to find a domestic quarry for the job, and they came through. The rest of the high-quality flagstone was produced at a quarry in New York State opened specifically to fabricate the material. Its purple is one of the many colors picked up in the slate shingles above our heads. Motioning to the multi-hued roofing, Rose explains that the super-thick Vermont slate, rated to last 100 years, was chosen by the client and architect for its durability and aesthetic. The cool tones in the roof are echoed by the bluestone of the windowsills and the tops of the columns that frame the wide terrace, along with solid bronze railings. Richer tones in the roof match stained mahogany bay windows. Rose recommended the natural finish for its beauty. The clear finish demands more frequent attention to keep its luster, says Rose, thereby ensuring that small cracks and larger fissures don’t get overlooked before worsening, as the rear of the house faces the Long Island Sound, in all its watery, windy intensity.
The land sweeping down to the shoreline was overgrown when the house was built. From the ground level, the view was completely obscured. The owner received approval from the state to remove the unruly wetland, replacing it with indigenous vegetation that is both pleasantly arranged and allows for a full experience of living on the water. The back terrace became the perfect setting for the client’s father’s 80th birthday party last May. Two hundred guests, including Rose, appreciated the view, the pool and the various seating vignettes along the terrace. “There’s a lot of room to move around and talk,” Rose says as we step inside.
The client has granted Rose free reign of the house for our tour, and we enter through a solid-panel kitchen door manufactured by Rosewood Custom Cabinetry of Killingworth. A number of these doors lead into other rooms, with leaded glass windows at their tops to lend an antique appearance.
As we walk across Italian porcelain tiles on the radiant-heated kitchen floor, Rose points out the Zeluck-made windows that overlook the terrace and Sound. Above the larger glass panel are Tru Divided Light window panes. When the saltwater winds and heavy storms assault from outside, Tru Divided Light construction makes it possible for each pane to be replaced individually and as needed, reducing maintenance costs while ensuring architectural integrity. All of the windows throughout the home were designed and built this way by Zeluck Incorporated of Brooklyn, New York.
Off the kitchen, the family room is embellished with a unique floor of fumed antique pine. The character and patina of the floor boards were created by smoking salvaged wood in a kiln-like pressure chamber, then hand-waxing and staining each plank. This particular flooring was done by Baba Wood, whose service includes blessing the material before sending it to its fate. Above, EM Rose hand-joined reclaimed timber over a solid ceiling before plastering between the beams to create a clever, interesting and decorative configuration that mimics a true timber-frame building.
The floor in the dining room is hand-planed, hand assembled French oak parquet in the “Versailles” pattern.
It has been adjusted to fit exactly into the room, without overlap or discontinuity, and it flows into the limestone floor of the entrance hall, where an original Rodin bust is on display, along with 600-year-old twin tapestries. Another piece of art is displayed on the wall above the staircase. It is a replica of a work by modern English Impressionist Edward Seago, a favorite of the client’s. The oil painting was created by one of Rose’s crew who specializes in faux painting, which is one of EM Rose Building Company’s many services.
The care the artist took in re-creating the Seago was also taken by Rose when hand-selecting outstanding cherry wood for the library. The book-matched veneers on each wall all came from one flitch of veneers from the same tree and same log. Panel after panel was
chosen for its superior quality and compelling color and grain. The lumber for the cabinetry came from a different supplier. Again, Rose went through volumes of wood with an expert eye to determine the finest material that would match the veneers. Before we exit the library, he points out the zigzagging brick of the fireplace, a herring-bone pattern that took meticulous care to create.
Such meticulousness was rewarded. EM Rose finished the original home in 2004, but were recently welcomed back by the client when he wanted his downstairs finished. “I had a serious Tudor-Gothic theme in mind when my client asked us to give him a private theater. He left the details to me, and I turned to Sean O’Kane, AIA of Ridgefield to bring all of the details together. I’m always thinking ahead about what more we can do on a project,” Rose explains as he opens the door that leads down to this impressive addition. At the bottom of the stairs, an antique stained-glass window that depicts the crest of the English Crown is built into millwork and back-lit so that it appears to be refracting sunlight.
Rose found it while antiquing with his wife in Old Saybrook, and knew it would be just the thing for his newest project in the house. He called the client from his cell phone, and received the go-ahead to purchase the antique. Neither man was sure where the piece would fit, but fit it does. Rose relates the story of his find with the passion that sustains him in creating beauty as he goes, fitting together ideas and materials alike.
The idea for the downstairs renovation was to imitate the feel of an English country home. Though completed last, it is a foundation of design for the rest of the Americanized structure atop it. The reclaimed French limestone that makes up the floors was originally quarried between 400 and 500 years ago and imported directly from France by EM Rose. Stepping up into a window seat, we take a closer look at the bay window that is faux-painted to match the hand-carved old English Oak throughout the lower level.
The English Oak carvings and iron Gothic motifs and brackets, finials and fleurs-de-lis were handmade to designs by architect Sean O’Kane. Interior designer Lynn Brown of Darien placed antique leather pillows in the window seat and on nearby couches, her touches always keeping in precise time with structural themes. On the wall, carved in the form of 15th century linenfold paneling, there hangs a polychromed carving in English Oak of the client’s own family crest. The images of knights on the crest were photographed and sent to Britain, where the brilliant artisans at Stuart Interiors hand-carved a four-foot-tall statue in English Bog Oak, carbon-dated to be 18,000 years old. This oak is from trees that fell before and during the last Ice Age and were trapped in an anaerobic, or oxygen-free, environment, where they began to petrify instead of rot. The dark, ancient wood modeled now in the shape of a knight stands as a column at the edge of the bar, a spacious wine cellar alongside, its doors covered in hand-made iron motifs of grapevines. Inside, the client’s extensive wine collection, cataloged by computer, is numbered and arranged. Sipping wine at the bar is a favorite activity for guests and family, as is relaxing in the custom private theater. Furnished with row upon row of deep, comfortable leather seating, the theater features a universal remote control for lighting and media equipment, a giant movie screen, a custom-built Runco projector, and a custom-built water-cooled computer server that allows the children to play video games online and wirelessly with up to 100 people worldwide.
More technological wonder may be found in the main boiler room, also located on the lower level. There are three other satellite mechanical rooms throughout the house, but this is where the central boilers are located. Forty-thousand gallons of pool water circulate through pipes and are heated here. Spa water is also warmed. The radiant heat floors in every room of the house and the radiant heat tubing below the driveway that automatically melts snow and ice are all managed from this room. Valves are clearly marked, lighting is optimum, and care was taken to make sure there is plenty of room for more than one technician to work in the space at the same time. Rose is proud to show me his design work in this crucial room. “If you really want to see the quality of a project and its builder,” he says, “go look where no one else would think to look.” Truly, the boiler room’s layout leaves no detail of maintenance uncovered.
Such is the way of EM Rose Building Company. Rose and his team construct homes that incorporate old-fashioned quality and beauty with modern technology and comfort. When I congratulate him on his work before we part, he looks genuinely pleased, but he cannot dwell on my compliments for long. His phone is ringing. He takes the business call, and is quickly absorbed in discussion of work. He does not even sit down. Eric M. Rose is once again caught up in talk of new creation.
| EM Rose Building Company, LLC 34 East Industrial Road Branford, CT 06405 Office: 203-481-4550 Fax: 203-481-1927 email: erose@emrose.net Sargeant Stoneworks |
Moisan Architects Rick Moisan Woodbury, CT 203 263-3141 Zeluck Incorporated |
Sean O’Kane Architect Ridgefield, CT (203) 438-4208 sokaia.com Lynn Brown Inc. |
