We first came upon the work of New York-based design studio White Arrow when we profiled the row house they renovated for Buzzfeed’s very first employee, Peggy Wang. At the time, Wang was decamping to Queens in search of more space; several years later, it’s much the same reason that led the husband and wife team behind White Arrow, Keren and Thomas Richter, to embark on a renovation for their own young family: an 1850s farmhouse in Pound Ridge, Westchester County.

At first the farmhouse was only meant to be a second home, a place to escape from Brooklyn when the Richters needed a break from the city. Then the pandemic struck, and, like so many, the family found themselves leaving the city for full-time country life.

Fortunately, Thomas and Keren had rehabbed the place just in time, transforming it from falling-down “estate condition” (with all the linoleum tiles and badly outdated cloth wiring that implies) to character-filled and preserved, with much-needed modern updates and nods to English country houses.

Let’s take a tour:

Photography by Thomas Richter, courtesy of White Arrow.

For more redone farmhouses, take a look at:

• Upstate Update: A Writer’s “Layered,” Eclectic Catskills Farmhouse, Three Years In
• Kitchen of the Week: Calamine Pinks in a Converted Barn Kitchen by Plain English
• Rehab Diary: Architect Ben Daly and Family at Home in a Converted Sheep Shed