THE ART OF LIVING written by: Gladys Montgomery photography by: Kit Latham
Anne Fredericks featured in Berkshire Living Magazine
THE ART OF LIVING
Written by Gladys Montgomery
Inspired by aesthetics, health, and nature, a renaissance woman creates a sophisticated, eco-conscious home in Great Barrington, Mass.
“It’s a wonderful thing to live in a house that really expresses who you are,” says Anne Fredericks. “One’s individuality can be made known by consciously building a house.” For proof of those statements, one need only look at the home the investment-banker-turned-artist built five years ago. A happy alchemy of classical architecture, fine craftsmanship, and eco-sensitive, health-conscious green materials and furnishings, Fredericks’s home expresses her love of the natural world, as well as her commitment to authenticity and self-expression in her art, her home, and her life.
Fredericks’s background includes a degree in art history with a year’s study in Paris and architectural history research, which became part of the Avery Index at Columbia University. In 1979, she lever- aged her research skills into a trading job on Wall Street—one of the first women to do so—rising through the ranks to lead international equity sales departments at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, trading in markets across the globe, working 24/7.
In 1989, while still on Wall Street, she began creating singularly beautiful mirrors, one of which is in the collection of the White House. Like “jewelry for the walls,” their basswood and gesso frames are embellished, using Renaissance techniques, with egg tempera paints and twenty-four carat gold applied by water gilding. Decorated with gold gilt images of flora and fauna, “simple scenes that are vanishing at our hand,” they illuminate the preciousness of ordinary things, inviting viewers to step into an environment. “They all tell some kind of story about nature, its fragility but great strength, things that are leaving us, making people aware of this in- credible beauty,” she says. “It has to have meaning, or I can’t do it.” In 1990, Fredericks left Wall Street, purchased a circa-1770 house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and revamped her life. “I decided I couldn’t live in New York anymore. I needed native beauty—the Green River, the fields, the gentle woods, this community. I wanted to be outdoors, and pursue an intellectual life. I wanted to build a personal life after having only a work life.” A decade later, invoking Winston Churchill’s remark, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” she decided that creating a new home would be the cornerstone of a healthier life. “I think it is very important to approach building in what I call an organic way,” she says. “For me, this means starting with thoughts of how you want to live in your house, what makes you comfortable or creative or happy. An important question few people think of when building is what will make me healthy? This organic approach is at odds with most approaches to architecture, where the exterior style of the house dictates almost all other decisions.”
As she researched materials and before she determined her home’s style, she began developing the floor plan, thinking about where she would eat, sleep, and entertain. She watched where the sun rose and set and sat in different locations to analyze the views. “The house started to build itself from the inside out,” she says. After sketching her ideas, she chose the site and cleared some pines, along with debris of old trucks and bathtubs, to create a generous southern exposure along the home’s long façade. “I wanted nature to be a critical part of the house and how I live here,” Fredericks says. “The land will tell you how to use it,” she says. “If you listen, you will end up building a green house.” From the road, the roof of the house is barely visible above the earth’s embrace. Its low profile enhances privacy and its intimate relationship to the land—anyone seated in the study is eye-to-eye with sheep in the adjacent meadow. “In holding the house close to the contours of the earth, I was also creating microclimates that would prove wonderful for growing things around the building’s perimeter,” says Fredericks, an avid gardener and conservationist, who co-founded Elm Watch, which is planting disease-resistant trees along Route 7 from Williamstown to Pine Plains, Massachusetts. “I already knew and loved this land, so I didn’t want to destroy it,” she recalls. “We built with as little construction waste as possible and with nothing toxic, because anything this building generated would go into someone’s landfill right here. I thought, if I’m building this house for my health, I’m also building it for the community.” In fact, this year, the Garden Club of America cited her as a “uniquely talented woman who lives her commitments and works diligently to ensure a healthy, sustainable environment for her community.” For the house, Fredericks chose a practical, one-story design. The eight-room structure, which she shares with her husband of two-and-a-half years, Marc Fasteau, a New York venture capitalist and author, is 2,800 square feet in size, with fourteen-foot ceilings. Because proportions are right, rooms open from one to another, and no space is wasted, it feels much larger than it is. “There’s not a room in the house that’s not used every day,” she says. Fredericks feels most discussions about green building overemphasize heating. “I was more interested in a recycled or sustainable house, one that would stand for generations without requiring constant maintenance and where I could use green products,” she says. At the project’s start, the cost/benefit/return equation on solar panels didn’t justify the expense, but she says she may retrofit them. She chose propane fuel and radiant under-floor heating, except in the kitchen, which is heated by the Aga range from her previous house. There is no central air conditioning. When Fredericks was planning her home, many green building materials were not available in the U.S., so she looked to Canada for recycled, sustainable products free of the toxic components that would undermine the health of the house. To conserve energy, diverse Canadian products were combined into large shipments. Otherwise, Fredericks purchased materials and services locally. “I believe in right livelihood, employing local people and keeping the community strong,” she notes.
She hired—then fired—an architect, and ultimately worked with Great Barrington builder Peter Whitehead and master craftsmen on his crew, finalizing design details during construction. “They were phenomenal. One mason and two men literally built this house from the ground up . . . on time and under budget,” she exclaims. Now, in addition to her artistic work, Fredericks advises a select roster of clients on home design and green building. Beneath exterior walls (of stucco integrally tinted with mineral pigments), the principal building material is Durisol, eight-inch-thick blocks of non-toxic, cement-bonded, recycled 100 percent waste- wood fiber. Invented in Switzerland after WWII, it is, Fredericks notes, being used in Canada to build skyscrapers. She reasoned, “If it can stand up to Swiss regulators and Canadian winters, it should be fine here.” Interior insulation is Icynene, a non-toxic, air-blown foam, which, she notes, “dramatically improved the R-factor of the house and adds to its quiet.”
She joined the U.S. Energy Star program, which provides for state energy audits of new homes. “This house achieved the program’s requirement even before we had shingled the roof. Because we passed our inspections, the state gave me money toward the purchase of my low-water-using, energy-saving appliances,” Fredericks says. Roofing—with a fifty-year warranty—is faux-slate tile, made from recycled tires and baby diapers, which are, Fredericks declares, among “the worst offenders in landfills.” Because the house is dug into its site, the roof is higher on the south side; a deep overhang provides shade and channels moisture away from exterior walls. Interior walls are formaldehyde-free plywood and medium density fiberboard (MDF) containing recycled pressed wood and non- toxic glues; MDF was also used for ceilings. Old-fashioned plaster walls and smooth concrete flooring are serenely elegant, visually unifying, and easy to maintain. The concrete floor, sealed with a non- toxic penetrating sealer, is a “heat sink,” retaining solar warmth. Tall windows and French doors along the south façade welcome light and solar heat and optimize flow between interior rooms and outdoor living areas. Windows on the north side are small and few;
“inspired by windows in a medieval palazzo,” the plaster around one of them angles out to admit more light. “If you want to make your house passively solar, you must eliminate barriers which block the sun’s warmth,” Fredericks maintains. “Most new windows have gases between the panes that minimize the warmth of the sun—an insulating factor that in this instance was contraindicated. We used Pella architectural series doors because they had real muntins, which could be ordered to my specifications—three-light—but more importantly because we could get double-glazed windows with no argon gas.”
This page: The kitchen incorporates architectural salvage finds, such as the breakfront made from a window from the old Berkshire Athenaeum, and a table from Fredericks’s first Manhattan apartment. Opposite: Pantry cabinetry is architectural salvage.
that would undermine the health of the house. To conserve energy, diverse Canadian products were combined into large shipments. Otherwise, Fredericks purchased materials and services locally. “I believe in right livelihood, employing local people and keeping the community strong,” she notes.
She hired—then fired—an architect, and ultimately worked with Great Barrington builder Peter Whitehead and master craftsmen on his crew, finalizing design details during construction. “They were phenomenal. One mason and two men literally built this house from the ground up . . . on time and under budget,” she exclaims. Now, in addition to her artistic work, Fredericks advises a select roster of clients on home design and green building. Beneath exterior walls (of stucco integrally tinted with mineral pigments), the principal building material is Durisol, eight-inch-thick blocks of non-toxic, cement-bonded, recycled 100 percent waste- wood fiber. Invented in Switzerland after WWII, it is, Fredericks notes, being used in Canada to build skyscrapers. She reasoned, “If it can stand up to Swiss regulators and Canadian winters, it should be fine here.” Interior insulation is Icynene, a non-toxic, air-blown foam, which, she notes, “dramatically improved the R-factor of the house and adds to its quiet.”
She joined the U.S. Energy Star program, which provides for state energy audits of new homes. “This house achieved the program’s requirement even before we had shingled the roof. Because we passed our inspections, the state gave me money toward the purchase of my low-water-using, energy-saving appliances,” Fredericks says. Roofing—with a fifty-year warranty—is faux-slate tile, made from recycled tires and baby diapers, which are, Fredericks declares, among “the worst offenders in landfills.” Because the house is dug into its site, the roof is higher on the south side; a deep overhang provides shade and channels moisture away from exterior walls. Interior walls are formaldehyde-free plywood and medium density fiberboard (MDF) containing recycled pressed wood and non- toxic glues; MDF was also used for ceilings. Old-fashioned plaster walls and smooth concrete flooring are serenely elegant, visually unifying, and easy to maintain. The concrete floor, sealed with a non- toxic penetrating sealer, is a “heat sink,” retaining solar warmth. Tall windows and French doors along the south façade welcome light and solar heat and optimize flow between interior rooms and outdoor living areas. Windows on the north side are small and few;
“inspired by windows in a medieval palazzo,” the plaster around one of them angles out to admit more light. “If you want to make your house passively solar, you must eliminate barriers which block the sun’s warmth,” Fredericks maintains. “Most new windows have gases between the panes that minimize the warmth of the sun—an insulating factor that in this instance was contraindicated. We used Pella architectural series doors because they had real muntins, which could be ordered to my specifications—three-light—but more importantly because we could get double-glazed windows with no argon gas.” Thresholds and windowsills are of Otis granite. “I had a desire to keep the windows open in rainstorms—to hear the wonderful sound. This pointed to the use of stone, which I believe was the greenest choice I could make for this house,” she explains. Fredericks’s appreciation for the past, for fine detail, and for neoclassical Continental style shows in the site plan, with its low-lying stucco house, pebbled forecourt, brick wall espaliered with peach trees, two-story guesthouse/studio, and columned pool house fashioned after a Greek temple. It’s also evident in the interiors, where architectural details, along with the conceptualization of various rooms—an old-fashioned butler’s pantry, the “fainting room,” which contains a daybed draped in antique Fortuny fabric and is used as a cloak room or ancillary bedroom when guests arrive—give the house a timeless quality. Salvaged doors used throughout came from her girlhood home (a 1920s Tudor), painter Jasper Johns’s Connecticut outbuildings, the Historic Albany Foundation’s parts warehouse, even Goa, India. The living room’s fireplace surround com- bines European carved limestone columns with a plaster mantelpiece Fredericks made. Some pantry cupboards are from a Boston-area mansion; others are old Dutch library cabinets. In the kitchen, a triangular, galvanized New York City brownstone ornament surmounts an old German silver sink, while the breakfront was made from a salvaged window frame from the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The master bedroom’s navy blue velvet walls and drapes are fabric recycled from an art exhibit she did in Great Barrington. Strong wall colors—deep navy, bright chartreuse, aquamarine, and ruby red—in second- ary rooms counterpoint subdued hues in the entry, living room, and kitchen.
When she furnished the house, Fredericks drew on a lifetime’s worth of objects from her first New York apartment, travels in Japan and Italy, house sales, regional auctions, antiques dealers, and architectural salvage suppliers. Seating, for instance, includes couches of her own design, an eighteenth- century Venetian walnut grotto chair, and inexpensive, secondhand chairs, all neoclassical in style, all reupholstered.
Ultimately, Fredericks’s aesthetic is an alloy of practicality and beauty, art and nature. Works by Berkshire artists Walton Ford, Cynthia Atwood, Susan Hardcastle, Joan Griswold, Ann Getsinger, Frederic Tellander, and David Jurney are juxtaposed with nineteenth-century naturalist’s trays of eggs, beetles, and butterflies and a bell jar displaying a flock of bright-feathered, Victorian taxidermy birds. The artful arrangement of these things transforms the table in the entry hall into a paean to the natural world. Whether crafted by human hand or by nature, Fredericks says, quoting German playwright Bertolt Brecht, “Every art contributes to the greatest art of all—the art of living.”
The spring crown is made from birds nests filled with eggs from her neighbor’s French pullets and sprays of apple blossoms.
For the summer crown, Anne used green moss, grass, garden-fresh strawberries, pink cosmos, pansies, roses, and lavender flowers. Butterflies, moths, and dragonflies suspended on thin wire hover over the arrangement.
This autumn crown features the work of hornets. The base is a large papery nest, which Anne topped with honeycomb, wasp galls, elderberries, and flowers.
