Written by Alex Ronan  |  Photographed by Marta Xochilt Perez, and The Inn at Kenmore Hall  |  Produced and Art Directed by Michelle Adams

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How one couple transformed an eighteenth century home while keeping its storied past alive.

After leaving J.Crew in 2017, Frank Muytjens, the former head of menswear design at the label, no longer needed to be in New York every week. He relocated full time to what was previously a weekend home in the Berkshires. He’d been dating Scott Edward Cole, an artist and restaurateur who lived in the area, but suddenly they were able to spend a lot more time together. “I remember having dinner one night and it turned out that we both wanted to open a bed and breakfast one day,” says Muytjens. “Even before we knew each other, that was a dream we each had.” 

But Cole also happened to have a place in mind in Richmond, Massachusetts. As he explains, “Driving around, I would often pass by this very overgrown place with a hint of grandeur and these beautiful Palladian windows visible through the bramble and overgrown trees.” It was on the market by the time the two were at dinner talking about one day doing a bed and breakfast. 

Cole pulled up the listing, showing Muytjens “postage sized” photos of a “pretty dilapidated place,” as Muytjens remembers. “He was like, ‘you have to see this because I think it's going to be really beautiful.’ We walked through the house and we felt an energy that really spoke to us.” Cole adds “there was no poker face with the realtor.” The couple recently gave us a tour of the Inn at Kenmore Hall, chatted about all things renovation, and shared the answer to the number one design question guests ask… 

They put in an offer, got the keys, and embarked on an extensive renovation. The home dates to 1792, became a boarding school in the 1880s (when it earned the name Kenmore Hall), and has had various lives as a private home, parsonage, a summer home for musicians and composers in the area for Tanglewood’s summer music programming. “The bones of the building were in really good shape and thankfully it hadn’t been touched much,” Cole says. “There were two earlier renovations, but whoever did those was very mindful about the integrity of the house and kept the classic Georgian proportions and all of the millwork.” Still, it needed extensive updating, including a complete electrical rewiring, new plumbing, updated heating and cooling systems. 

But maintaining what Muytjens calls “the marks of history” was a priority, even amidst a big overhaul, so they were careful to let the patina and age of the home shine through. Planning for a bed and breakfast, they designed a private apartment for themselves out of a suite of servants quarters. Their apartment is above the kitchen and easily accessible, but when the Inn is full, they have complete privacy. They were even able to eke out en-suite bathrooms for all of the guest rooms. “No one believes us when we tell them, but the renovation only took six months,” Cole says.

They sourced furniture largely from their former homes, combining soulful antiques and mid-century stunners like a Paul McCobb dresser. The bathrooms are stocked with Aesop and the beds feature linens from Matteo. There are wool blankets from Faribault Wool for chilly nights and each room has cozy seating – a vintage Eames lounge chair and velvet chaise or a built-in reading nook with views over the fields. 

The Inn At Kenmore Hall’s Paint Palette

The couple used Benjamin Moore paints, to stunning effect.  

“The objects that we choose to bring into our home are things that delight us in some way,” Cole says. “This is our sixth year, so the layers are getting a little more dense. But it’s always nice to revisit various vignettes we’ve created, pull something out of rotation for a bit, and find a new place for it later.”

The thing guests ask about most frequently is for details on the paint colors. After exploring a bunch of options, they settled on Benjamin Moore. “I think the colors we were drawn to comes from our interest in clothing – camo greens, denim colors, navy, a crisp gray,” says Muytjens.

When they temporarily closed the Inn during the height of the pandemic, the couple turned their attention to the backyard. “We had a lot of time on our hands and the garden project became bigger and bigger,” says Muytjens. 

There’s a lot to do in the Berkshires – and their list of nearby hits makes staying more than a weekend appealing – but when guests show up, the couple advise adding a bit of rest to the agenda. “We encourage people to unplug to whatever extent they can, be here in the space, and slow down a bit,” says Cole. “We’ve married our book collections and they’re all over the house.” Guests often gravitate to the gratis bar cart and grab a book on design or photography or gardening. Like the furniture, the books were collected over time and brought together by two people with a shared dream that first came up over dinner one night.