Over the years, the lore surrounding this bunkeresque building on a block of more traditional homes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has grown along with the neighborhood. The textured-block structure was built in 1919 as a candy-making factory for a nearby sweets shop. Since then, its occupants have included a textile-cleaning company, a contracting business, and—according to a neighbor—a Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor who lived there in the ’70s and added a greenhouse beneath a plexiglass bubble. In 2005, entrepreneurs Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston made it the East Coast headquarters of their startup incubator, Y Combinator. (Longtime neighbors allege the property was even once owned by two feuding brothers who nearly set it ablaze over a dispute.)

But the building’s eccentric past wasn’t what drew Paula Chauncey to buy it in 2011. She’d launched her investment advisory firm, Etre, years earlier in a period mansion in Boston and was ready for something that suited her industrial-leaning aesthetic. The single-story Cambridge building offered that and then some. “The inside looked like a Tom Swift playhouse,” Paula says. “There was no insulation. You could put your finger through the wall and be outside, and in the living area, plywood steps led to a kind of gangplank with grow lights.”

To transform the space into a fully functional office, Paula undertook an initial gut renovation that involved installing insulation and an HVAC system, updating the unfinished kitchen, and adding a diminutive steel mezzanine in the space the gangplank once occupied. Then, after a few years, she decided to convert the structure into a live/work space with offices and gathering areas on the ground level and a private second floor where she could escape after busy days with clients.

Plans for the renovation had been approved, but the project stalled before construction began. So a friend of Paula’s, Boston designer Heather Wells, introduced her to William Ruhl and Sandra Jahnes, who were working together and would go on to found Massachusetts architecture firm Ruhl | Jahnes. When the team discovered water damage on the ground level, the project grew from a second-floor addition to a complete overhaul.

Throughout it all, Paula “held firm with her industrial aesthetic,” Jahnes says. “She said, ‘I don’t want a house that looks polished.’ ” The architects incorporated raw plaster walls and ebonized oak to help connect the ground floor and upper level, which features a library mezzanine.

“We were okay with working with what was there. The aesthetic goal was to tie together the upper and lower levels.”
—William Ruhl, architect

Natural light pours in through a huge south-facing picture window and a clerestory opposite, while on the far end, an open steel bookcase separates the space from the passage leading to the guest suite and main bedroom. There, a large, sculptural freestanding tub sits in the corner before a translucent storage wall the architects built to hold Paula’s collection of Jean Patou Sublime perfume bottles.

What was once a local oddity is now a favorite stop for friends and neighbors, who often gather in the dining room for potlucks. “Then, when I go upstairs, I feel like I’m in a big bird’s nest,” Paula says. “It’s both a cocoon and a panorama.”

Project Credits:

Architecture: William T. Ruhl and Sandra A. Jahnes

Construction: F.H. Perry Builder

Interior Design: Heather Wells

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