She is an Island Queen with a rather unladylike name: The Capt. Amazon Littlefield House.
Built in 1888-89 on Block Island, this grand Queen Anne overlooks meadows and fields and is adorned in yellow clapboard and wavy shingles skirted by a wraparound porch along Corn Neck Road opposite Clay Head Trail leading to a secluded beach in the northern tier of the island.
Two-lane Corn Neck Road is a central island artery.
This is not an advertisement, though the place is for rent. I know this because my family and I once rented it for a delightful week.
I also will fess up to knowing the Stonington architect, Dan Costa, who co-owns the place and played an integral role beginning two decades ago in restoring and creating what stands there today.
Rather, this is a piece about why the Amazon Littlefield House, always a stop on Block Island historic homes tours, is prized as much for the interiors as the exterior, but since the outside is what most people see, let’s have a look.
The New York Times, in a 2006 story about Costa and his partners, Susan Sellers and Michael Rock, founders of the graphic design firm 2x4 in New York’s SoHo, described what they took on this way: “… a tattered old lady of a house on an overgrown plot of land, most recently a bee farm and long ago the residence of Amazon Littlefield, a fishing captain out of Greenport, on Long Island, whose family line is as established on Block Island as its prehistoric bluffs.”
A study of historical architectural resources on Block Island says this, a bit technically:
“A staggered-cruciform-plan, 2 and ½ half story dwelling with wraparound front porch, bay windows and a jerkinhead end-gable roof. … Tradition maintains that Littlefield and his wife, Marintha, saw a similar house while traveling in New York. Its design, reminiscent of those found in late 19th-century pattern books, clear breaks with traditional island vernacular form.”
Michael Rock explained a bit more about a Queen Anne design in the Victorian era.
“The Amazon Littlefield was built in 1888, placing it in the correct time for the Queen Anne Revival,” he wrote in an email, “which is commonly thought to come to America in New York around the 1870s. … The term is applied quite loosely and there are no real hard and fast rules but the house does exhibit a few of the typical features:
“Asymmetry, exaggerated eaves, dominant gable in front, wraparound porch at the entrance, diversely patterned shingles, bay windows, wooden roof.
“However, Queen Anne houses often had towers and second-story porches, and often had more elaborate ‘gingerbreading’ that are not present (probably due to the fact that BI was quite a modest place back then). The really interesting innovation of the house is that fact that the cruciform plan allows all the bedrooms to have cross ventilation, so it almost never gets hot.”
Costa, who grew up in Providence and spent part of his childhood in Rio de Janeiro and Trinidad, is a graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He primarily designs summer homes, including projects on Cape Cod, Block Island and Bald Head Island in North Carolina, and is a member of the Block Island Historical Society board of directors.
The Amazon Littlefield House, in fact, is featured among 25 summer homes in the Northeast in a 360-page book of photos and essays called “Summer to Summer: Houses by the Sea” by Jennifer Ash Rudick and photographer Tria Giovan and published a year ago by Vendome Press.
Rock and Sellers found the house after a search, perhaps two decades ago, for a place similar to the one in which Rock grew up, “a rambling, welcoming old shingle-style house in Warwick, R.I., on Narragansett Bay,” wrote The Times.
The interior was a disaster.
“Mr. Costa was used to designing summer houses for clients, but a wood floor slathering in beeswax presented a different kind of challenge,” said The Times. “So did a 1950s kitchen with rusty metal cabinets and a backyard with a midden — that is, a family dump — that yielded shoes, an iron stove, everything in fact but a drearily mid-20th century kitchen sink.”
Underdaunted, the partners set about reconfiguring, redesigning and reoutfitting with appliances and cabinets in tune with the house’s character. They bought a 1940s stove, restored an old pantry with 1940ish glassware and utensils. Throughout the house is an array of odd knickknacks and curios as well as art.
“For Mr. Costa,” wrote The Times, “part of the pleasure was working against type. ‘The funny thing is, the house is Victorian, but we stayed away from Victorian motifs,’ he said. ‘Most of what we did is compatible with an old house, but it’s very simple.’”
As Jennifer Ash Rudick wrote in her book, “On an island, where practicality is paramount, almost everything they sourced were period materials from salvage yards. Furniture was likewise scavenged from various family homes in Rhode Island, Bucks County and Maine.”
The house features the Masonic sun and moon symbols carved into the peak as well as a converted attic that is now a sleeping loft for children.
The house, astride a grassy lane leading to the historic Sheffield Cemetery, is separated from Corn Neck Road by a tall hedge and surrounded by perennial gardens, trees and lawns. The stone patio at the back is a natural for cooking, drinks, dinner and sunsets.
Again, this is not an advertisement. The place is a place apart, and it is an island treasure.
Steven Slosberg lives in Stonington and was a longtime reporter and columnist. He may be reached at maayan72@aol.com.
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Postscripts: This 'tattered old lady of a house' on Block Island is a Queen Anne stunner - The Westerly Sun
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