teahouse

LeRoy, N.Y., is an historic village that's most famous (or most notorious?) for being the birthplace of Jell-O.   Far more significant to me, however, is the fact that the town is filled with beautiful 19th-century homes that run the architectural gamut from Colonial to Italianate to Victorian in style.  It's a beautiful place, and the site of one of my firm's most unusual projects in recent memory. The home featured in this article is a Second Empire Italianate estimated to be about 140 years old.  It's a prime example of 19th-century craftsmanship, from the Mansard roof with its scrolled cornices to the drive-through porte-cochere and the wraparound porch with its beefy wood railings.   It's definitely an architectural treasure, filled with the kinds of details that have been lost as far as today's custom-built homes are concerned.  Mindful of those special touches, we set about designing a similar level of detail into the landscaping in creating gardens and watershapes that brought real tranquility to