Mary Tyler Moore

The octagonal entrance hall with its peaked ceiling and the living room with exposed beams suggest generous but not palatial proportions; the house is a compound of additions to a former hunting cabin, keeping rooms at a comfortable human scale.

Salvaged 18th-century Pennsylvania barn siding floors, heavy plaster walls with raspberry and earth pigments, stone fireplaces, wood beams, leather, linen upholstery, and braided rugs create an overwhelmingly tactile, natural warmth throughout.

Every room is densely layered with folk art, ancestor portraits, antique game boards, hooked rugs, miniature chairs, whirligigs, and collected antiques — all in coherent dialogue within a consistent warm Americana palette.

The Cotswold cottage vocabulary, Shaker-influenced furniture, Early American allwood pieces, ancestor portraits, and 19th-century Virginian cupboards commit strongly to a pre-industrial American/English country idiom with only minor modern intrusions.

Ancestor portraits from the Civil War era, Mary Tyler Moore's Lincoln collection from her miniseries research, the 1920s-era house itself renovated over decades, and a French pigeon basket all suggest genuine accumulated life rather than showroom purchases.

The article emphasizes this as a personal retreat — Moore describes wanting 'to entertain in a relaxed way,' gardening, riding horses, and escaping to the country; the compound is designed for the couple's private life, not social events.

Dogs are allowed on every piece of furniture, there's a dog shower by the back door, the kitchen is described as 'the heart of the house,' and the Shaker-influenced furnishings were deliberately chosen to be 'just comfortable' — this is a lived-in home.

Interior designer Timothy Macdonald shaped the aesthetic and the architects created the Cotswold framework, but Moore's personal collecting — prowling stores, accumulating Lincoln memorabilia, choosing folk art — keeps her personality strongly present.

Nothing here performs for an outside audience; the wealth is channeled into horses, gardens, antique collecting, and quiet country living — even the ancestor portraits serve personal genealogy rather than status display.