This 1929 Tudor Estate in NY Was Once Frequented by President Eisenhower — Now It’s the Base for School Runs, Hockey Season, and Pizza Nights
“I had always wanted to do a Tudor home. It’s so interesting architecturally. I like to look at the heritage of a place, and then seamlessly interweave that with something more contemporary and personal,” Jessica Gersten, founder of her namesake interior design agency Jessica Gersten Design, says of a commission she recently completed — a 1929 manor house reinvented into a sunshine-filled, sophisticated abode.
Known for her sculptural, richly layered take on interiors, Jessica faced a different challenge with this project than her usual homes. “So much of New York is white-box apartments; architectural richness like you see here isn’t that common to come by,” Jessica explains. The moment she saw how much character this house had, she couldn’t wait to get started.
In this 1929 Tudor home, herringbone brick gables, a stone chimney, and clipped boxwood parterres frame the terrace built for golden-hour gatherings by the pool.
(Image credit: Jessica Gersten)
The 10,000-square-foot residence, built in 1929, sits on the grounds of the South Course at Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, and is part of a cluster of Tudor Revival mansions originally built for local club members and socialite families in the early 20th century.
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The style swept through American suburbs and country club communities in the 1910s, ’20s, and ’30s. This was a phenomenon linked to the broader Anglophile wave spreading among old-money families and returning World War I veterans smitten with the English country houses and French châteaux they’d seen abroad.
34th U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who, as a young officer, learned to golf at the club) reportedly stayed in the house as a guest of friends who owned it at the time.
In the entry hall, the original carved staircase and paneled millwork set the stage for an Iroko wood table by Vasco Fragoso Mendes, its sculptural base grounding an oversized branch arrangement and a weathered ceramic vase.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
The house is graced by views of the surrounding estate, where a nostalgically furnished pool patio and verdant grass make its terracotta façade stand out even further.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
Scenic Ananbo wallpaper wraps the room beneath its original decorative ceiling, globe pendants marking a vertical rhythm overhead, while Jessica Gersten’s Crina dining chairs, sold through Studio Twentyseven, bring in texture.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
Much like the house’s inherent warmth, which stems directly from its past social life, the nutmeg-toned neutrals, mohair, and bronze finishes Gersten used were pulled directly from the house’s own bones. And so were the leaded windows and original wood detailing carefully preserved on the ground floor.
“I pulled those wood tones through the rest of the house,” she explains. “The foyer table, the sunroom, it all became about carrying that architecture forward.”
A hand-carved center table by Portuguese designer Vasco Fragoso Mende anchors the entrance, paired with a vintage Belgian stool and a large stoneware vessel by Caroline Blackburn, styled with tall branches to draw the eye upward.
“I wanted something sculptural that pulled people in, and then created height in the room, not everything low to the ground,” Gersten says of the bespoke piece by Mende.
Original framing and leaded glass preserve the Tudor bones, while the furniture, lighting, and hand-chosen accessories skew contemporary. Organic wood ties every room together.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
The Gothic stone fireplace contrasts with a patterned lounge chair and a ceramic-and-metal side table, its verdigris patina echoing the fire’s warmth.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
Finding the right wood for it was its own process. Gersten and the maker went back and forth over photographs taken in the forest as they searched out the specific timber for the table.
“You can really see the hand in it,” Gersten says of the finished design. “I love pieces like that.”
The foyer also functions as the family’s real front door, in every sense: where kids drop backpacks after school, friends gather, and the household’s daily traffic naturally splits left and right through the rest of the house.
Seen from above, the Vasco Gragoso Medes table reads like a still life of its own, with the property’s generously sized windows casting a choreography of light and shadows on its hand-made surface.
(Image credit: Jessica Gersten)
This breakfast nook was built around drama. Janaina Tschäpe’s Your Eyes at Night glows electric blue against grasscloth walls, while an antique kilim-topped stool and Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s vintage steel-and-resin pendant offset the room’s angular chairs in walnut and leather.
(Image credit: Jessica Gersten)
That everyday functionality was, in fact, the real brief. The couple has three children, two of whom play competitive hockey. In winter, the family sets up a rink on the property, and the sunroom is where the household actually enters and exits.
“It couldn’t just be a pretty house,” Gersten says. “The flow needed to work for how they actually live.”
She reworked the sunroom’s layout entirely: a dark plaster chandelier and shearling stools soften a space built for high traffic, with sofas positioned to face the grounds and a long table behind them sized for pizza night.
The adjoining living room, home to the family’s piano, was designed with corner banquettes for lounging and enough circulation for kids to cut straight through to the rest of the house.
The owners love how the cloud-soft banquette in ivory and sage works with the ceramic wave wall sculpture.
(Image credit: Jessica Gersten)
In a wood-paneled corner, a chess table set for play.
(Image credit: Jessica Gersten)
The dining room, by contrast, was conceived as its own self-contained world. Scenic Ananbo wallpaper sets the tone, paired with Rib pendants from Konekt and horsehair dining chairs from Gersten’s own Lusitano collection. Their slightly irregular, hand-finished spines a deliberate nod to imperfection.
“None of it makes obvious sense as a combination until it’s in the room together,” she concludes of the pairing. “That’s sort of the point.”
A camera obscura photograph by Richard Learoyd hangs above the credenza. “For many of the other artworks I collaborated with Jessica Chestman. Art and its placing are so important; scale, proportion, the emotional connection to the room,” Gersten says. “The client trusted us both completely, and that’s really key to all of my projects.”
Sculptural stainless steel chair catches the light beneath Sheila Hicks’s La Ronde.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
In the primary suite’s sitting area, Tyler Mitchell’s “The Sky Is Cold But the Wing Blood Hot” hangs draped like fabric above a ceramic coffee table.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
At the top of the stair, hand-carved newel posts and paneled millwork meet a jolt of cool color from Rebecca Ward’s Sentient in blues and violets – original and modern coming together.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
That instinct for unlikely pairings runs through the house.
In the living room, graphic Art Deco-style chairs upholstered in Dedar fabric sit against a Pierre Augustin Rose Vendôme sofa, beneath an Anna Karlin sculptural suspension light in travertine. A piece Gersten describes as “pushing the envelope a little” against the room’s more traditional bones.
It’s an approach she traces back to an earlier career in fashion. “It’s like building a runway collection. There has to be variety, but also an underlying connective thread running through it,” she finds.
Here, that thread is never venturing into cool or heavily saturated territory, and always circling back to the materials the architecture itself suggests, like the stone fireplace anchoring the living room.
In the bedroom a bench from 1stDibs covered in Cowtan & Tout, a sofa from Arit Designs Inc. and a rug by Élitis.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
Meanwhile, even the bathroom become a highlight of the house, with brass finishes and neon lighting bridging present and past in perfect synergy.
Image credit: Jessica Gersten
If Gersten’s approach in Rye boils down to anything, it’s this: pull your materials from what the house already gives you rather than importing a new palette, don’t shy away from pairing an old-world piece with something modern from your own collection, and treat lighting as a sculptural decision rather than an afterthought. It’s the single biggest lever, she says, for making a room feel considered.
1stDibs
Jindrich Halabala Lounge Chairs Upholstered in Brown Pierre Frey Mohair
1stDibs
Charlotte Perriand Table En Forme Libre, Wood by Cassina
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Spencer Arc Floor Lamp
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