Today, Architectural Digest is welcomed by Bryce Dallas Howard to tour her charming cottage in New York. Growing up in Connecticut and falling in love with her husband at NYU, the East Coast is full of happy memories for the Argylle star, so it made perfect sense as a retreat from the LA working life. The couple had their hearts stolen by a quaint 18th-century replica cottage. Inspired by legends Jane Austen and Wes Anderson, Howard enlisted the help of designer and family friend Claire Thomas to brighten the previously dark interiors, injecting each room with vibrant colors and fabrics. But what makes the home truly special are the familial touches, from her grandmother’s extensive depression glassware collection to the piano she learned to play as a child. “In the end it became so much less about aesthetics and more about the place we spend our lives…It’s beautiful to be in a space where I’m able to dream about a future.”See more of Bryce Dallas Howard's charming cottage here.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hello, AD.
00:03 I'm Bryce Dallas Howard and welcome to my New York home.
00:07 Come on inside.
00:08 Let me show you around.
00:21 We are in the living room right now.
00:24 About six years ago, my husband and I and my children were moving to New York and we
00:30 knew that we wanted to live in this area.
00:33 So we kept driving around and my husband kept pointing at this house and he kept saying,
00:40 "Oh, I wish that house was for sale."
00:42 Just a few days later, someone called us and said, "We saw that you were visiting houses
00:46 in the area.
00:47 There's a house that's not on the market yet and we wanted to see if you'd be interested."
00:50 And it was this house.
00:51 This house was built in 1937, but what I love about it is that it's actually a replica of
00:58 an 18th century home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, actually where I filmed my first movie, a
01:03 movie called The Village over 20 years ago.
01:06 Something that was very important to preserve was actually the wood on the ceiling and the
01:11 floor.
01:12 It's very unique.
01:13 The wood is over 90 years old and it is very important to preserve it.
01:17 It's one of the only houses with this kind of wood left intact.
01:21 And so in a way, the choices that were made in this room was to showcase that wood and
01:26 really celebrate the character of the house.
01:28 The curtains, they're Morrison Co. and it's actually called The Strawberry Thief.
01:33 And if you look closely, you can see that there are strawberries being stolen.
01:37 But we're okay with that.
01:40 Pretty much everything in this room is by Rejuvenation, which is a company I love so
01:46 much.
01:47 This is my favorite chair on planet Earth and I'm going to demonstrate what's so great
01:50 about this chair.
01:55 I just think this is so comfy cozy.
02:01 When we got the house, this was like one of the rooms that I fell in love with immediately
02:04 and there were already so many incredible qualities about it.
02:08 The floors, this epic stove, I just found it to be so, so, so, so, so beautiful.
02:14 We added this island here and these bistro chairs.
02:18 They're from Serena and Lily.
02:20 They bring kind of like a Parisian vibe to the entire room.
02:25 As you can see over here, there is a ton of depression ware everywhere in this house.
02:31 This all belonged to my grandmother, my dad's mom, and she collected this depression ware.
02:36 And I actually had it for years and years and years hidden behind doors and cabinets
02:41 and whatnot.
02:42 And the moment that Claire Thomas saw this, she was like, "Oh my gosh, this is the inspiration
02:46 for the entire house."
02:48 So that's really beautiful.
02:49 I also, I should say that I love this sink.
02:53 You shouldn't look inside of it, but it is so deep.
02:55 I will demonstrate it with my hand.
02:57 So I'm now at the bottom of the sink.
03:00 So it's a very deep sink, which is fantastic because you can put a lot of dishes in there
03:05 and you don't have to deal with it until it's peeking out of the top.
03:10 Don't tell my kids I said that because I would never let them get away with that, but definitely
03:14 a selling point.
03:20 This is the dining room, which can also be called the sunroom.
03:24 I love this room.
03:25 We actually, we built this room.
03:27 We added it onto the house when we first moved in here.
03:30 You can see here the original stone exterior of the home.
03:34 It's a detail that I absolutely adore.
03:37 When Claire was designing the house, I don't know why, but I just kept being really obsessed
03:42 with Sense and Sensibility and we were just leaning way into Jane Austen world.
03:48 And so there's a kind of like light antique quality that existed in all of the adaptations
03:53 of her books.
03:54 And so there's something just about this room in particular that reminds me a lot of Sense
03:58 and Sensibility.
03:59 This table here is a table that's been in my family for a long time and it's great because
04:05 it's big and I have a big, giant family.
04:08 This is a lovely tablecloth that was custom made and just a little detail here.
04:14 Tulips.
04:15 My husband and I fell in love in Amsterdam and so there's always kind of like a tulip
04:20 motif happening in our life.
04:24 Something to mention here.
04:27 Morris & Co. again.
04:29 And these drapes are actually very special.
04:31 They're called Willow Bough and as you can see, they're embroidered.
04:36 But it's this idea of bringing nature inside of the home.
04:40 And this is a mint green after green depression wear that my grandmother gave to me.
04:45 There's so much of it and it's absolutely so beautiful.
04:48 There's a piano.
04:50 It's my family's piano.
04:52 They've made a point of telling me that I do not own the piano, that I am just borrowing
04:56 the piano.
04:57 But this is a piano that I took lessons on when I was a kid and everything.
05:01 So it's great to have it here.
05:07 This is the office.
05:08 We actually used this room primarily as a classroom during the pandemic and since then
05:14 it is my office.
05:16 Most of the furniture is from Denver Modern, another fantastic company.
05:21 Heirloom quality furniture, American made.
05:24 One of my favorite filmmakers is Wes Anderson and he has such a signature style.
05:29 So this room in particular is very Wes Anderson inspired.
05:35 There are vignettes and tableaus and all of that kind of everywhere.
05:39 There's a kind of playfulness about his filmmaking and his visuals that I really wanted to embrace
05:44 and yet it's also incredibly sophisticated.
05:47 This is the wallpaper.
05:48 The colors here, this kind of dusty rose, I just found to be really beautiful.
05:53 It's bringing nature inside and it's really reminiscent of that kind of 18th century kind
06:00 of powder color palette.
06:02 The paint colors, again it's that pink and mint green.
06:06 It's from Claire Paints but the actual name of the paints, the pink is called Meet Cute
06:13 because this is a rom-com that's happening right here and the mint green is actually
06:19 called Two Scoops.
06:21 So you know, it's adorable, absolutely adorable.
06:31 Welcome to the primary suite.
06:34 This room I adore.
06:36 It feels like joyful springtime and there's a reason why it feels joyful.
06:43 It's because all the furniture in this room is from Joybird, one of my favorite, favorite,
06:47 favorite companies.
06:48 I work out of my room 100% of the time, pretty much.
06:54 I feel very cozy, very focused and I just, for whatever reason, the vortex that is my
07:01 room is ideal for work and so what that means is that I need a place to work.
07:08 I don't love desks but I do love giant, giant chairs and this is called the Bryant Chair
07:16 and a Half.
07:17 I curl up on this and spend the entire day here.
07:23 It's really an amazing chair.
07:24 When I originally moved in here, we actually, we put a sofa in this room but it was kind
07:31 of overwhelming, the room.
07:32 It wasn't really right and so this bench was bought for $100 at an auction in Hudson Valley.
07:39 It was just a fantastic solution because you know, I can, as you can see, I kind of use
07:44 it to, you know, where I put my art books and you know, some pottery and all of that
07:48 but when folks come into the room, I can easily set these things aside and there's plenty
07:52 of seating area.
07:53 This is a limited edition print from a Polish-American artist named Maja who's based out of Los Angeles
08:00 and I just, you know, I found it really gorgeous.
08:03 Oh, Grandma Jean, Grandma Jean.
08:05 Okay, so this is the most important person.
08:10 This is my grandmother, my Grandma Jean, my dad's mom.
08:14 She was an actress and absolutely a total ham.
08:18 She was very hilarious and so much of this house is, you know, has really been inspired
08:24 by her and so the house is pink and green thanks to her.
08:33 This is the guest room.
08:34 It's cold.
08:35 I'm gonna legit light a fire.
08:37 I love this room because, you know, it is a place that I love to go and like hang out,
08:43 light a fire but because it's not the living room, I can shut the door.
08:47 There we go.
08:48 This will heat up really soon.
08:52 Something that we did with this room was we really repurposed and kind of zhuzhed a lot
08:57 of our vintage pieces that we had gotten from Rubbish Interiors in Los Angeles.
09:02 This desk we've had for, gosh, almost 20 years.
09:05 We've had this lamp forever.
09:07 We love this color green and so it really inspired this Morris & Co. wallpaper.
09:14 Like when we saw this wallpaper, we were like, "Oh my gosh, we know what room that wallpaper
09:18 is going in."
09:19 The bedding, okay, this bedding is from Parachute Home and it's called the Cloud Duvet.
09:24 It feels like a cloud.
09:26 My husband has a very serious record collection.
09:30 Here's a nice old record player here and here are his records and we hardly ever see him
09:34 when he's in this room.
09:36 So this Claire also got on an auction and when you're bidding at an auction, they give
09:43 you a sense of the size but maybe it's an estimation, maybe you're not actually reading
09:48 it, but this is meant to be a vase for flowers.
09:51 It's actually an umbrella holder but it's super cool, super, super cool and works perfectly
09:56 for flowers.
09:57 So this little vase is another tremendous example of scale and when you bid for things
10:04 online you might not have a sense of the size and so this we thought was going to be, you
10:10 know, size of a regular vase and it's a little itty bitty baby vase and I love it.
10:17 So we've got the very big asparagus umbrella holder that holds flowers and we have the
10:22 very mini little kind of Grecian vase.
10:25 We misassessed and we love it.
10:28 [music]
10:36 This is my daughter's room.
10:38 My daughter's favorite color is blue so this room is blue.
10:42 This here, we actually had this built for her so that she could have, you know, a desk
10:47 in her room because it's not a super giant space and there's a radiator under there and
10:52 so she gets to keep her legs very warm while she's doing her homework and whatnot.
10:57 My grandmother made this for me.
10:59 She used to sew a lot and she would make dolls for me and kind of my Halloween costumes and
11:04 all of that and they're reminders of her everywhere.
11:07 [music]
11:13 Alright, this is the guest house.
11:17 This used to be an attic and when I first came and looked at the house, it's actually
11:24 above our garage and I remember seeing this window and just thinking like, "Huh, if there's
11:31 a window, then there must be some space up there."
11:34 So sure enough, we came up here and there's, you know, very, very low ceilings admittedly
11:39 but it was very obvious that this could be a usable space.
11:42 My husband's grandmother absolutely loved yellow.
11:46 We would always, like for her, you know, birthdays and Hanukkah and everything, we would always
11:51 get her something that was yellow and so, you know, this space is an ode to her.
11:57 Parachute Home makes such great bedding but they also have come out with a furniture line
12:04 and so we've got this piece here, white oak coffee table.
12:09 It's really nice.
12:10 It really completes the space.
12:11 I love to sit here.
12:13 I love this little alcove.
12:15 It's just the best.
12:16 And I get to look out and, you know, grab my laptop and watch my neighbors walk by.
12:24 It's great.
12:25 It's a great community.
12:26 Bye, AD.
12:45 Thank you so much for coming.
12:46 I'll see you next time.
12:47 [Music]
12:47 [Music]
12:52 (upbeat music)