Peek inside this colorful, island-inspired home in Bethesda’s Bradley Manor

For a house built and decorated during some of the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hilary Cusack’s 6,500-square-foot colonial in Bethesda’s Bradley Manor feels like a bright and joyful retreat. “I asked to be surrounded by beauty and serenity in a nest that would comfort me,” says Cusack, a homemaker originally from Bermuda who relocated from Concord,
Massachusetts, to be close to two of her four adult children who live in this area.

Location drew her to purchase the site of her new home, which shares a back fence with the home of her eldest daughter, son-in-law and their three young children. But the house that was already there didn’t work for her—the 1960s colonial had cramped rooms and a prominent two-car garage. So, after buying the property in 2019, Cusack opted to tear it down and start fresh, living with her daughter’s family for 18 months while the new house was built. 

“She wanted a place with curb appeal, a good connection to the outdoors, and space for her out-of-town family to stay when they visit,” says Luke Olson of GTM Architects, the Bethesda firm Cusack tapped to dream up a five-bedroom, five-bath, two-story neoclassical house with an impressive front portico. “It’s arched and has decorative glass, which ties into an arched doorway inside,” Olson says. “It creates a sense of purpose.” 

When visitors step inside, they enter a showstopping two-story foyer with a curving stairway that sweeps up the right wall before turning to meet the open second-floor landing. At the back of the entry hall, Olson’s barreled archway leads to a cozy great room. 

“With that arch, which is flanked by paneling and doors, we created a seamless transition from a high-ceilinged room to the lower-ceilinged den,” says Adam Goozh, co-founder of Chesapeake Custom Homes & Development, the Kensington company that executed GTM and Cusack’s vision. “It creates this warm, nice detail as you move from room to room.” Wallpaper in Thibaut’s Easom Trellis print and a vintage settee upholstered in a green and white Gastón y Daniela fabric both ground the entry space.

Three mini wings branch off from the foyer: a primary bedroom suite and library/home office for Cusack to the left, a formal dining room to the right, and, at the back of the house, a great room, screened-in porch and what Olson calls “a pretty substantial kitchen that acts as a day-to-day dining space.” 

At the top of the swooping stairs, GTM kept the open landing bright with a bank of three windows. The space doubles as a reading nook (with a window seat flanked by built-in bookshelves) and as a connection to the four en suite bedrooms and laundry room upstairs. “It all works so well, because the house fills up with my children and grandchildren around the holidays,” Cusack says.

To decorate the interiors, Cusack employed Kelley Proxmire after finding the Bethesda designer’s website. “I’m kind of formal-fancy, I don’t have a run-of-the-mill Ethan Allen style,” Cusack says. “I liked how Kelley elevated my kind of mix.” Cusack, who was born and raised in Bermuda, felt she’d discovered a kindred spirit who loved colors and prints as much as she did.

The pair started working together during COVID lockdowns in 2020, when Cusack would drive to Proxmire’s house and meet with her from a distance.“I didn’t even get out of my car; I’d just roll down the window,” Cusack says. “Kelley and her assistant wore masks and sat at a card table in her front yard to present their ideas.”

Proxmire was inspired by her client’s classical style and island heritage. “On the dining room wall, there’s a landscape painting by Bermuda artist Sheilagh Head in blues and greens,” Proxmire says. “The whole project jumped off from that.” 

That formal dining room, where Cusack now hosts Thanksgiving for her clan (she has three daughters and one son, plus eight grandchildren), was wallpapered in a green grass cloth. Other riffs on Head’s dreamy painting: a pair of generous host chairs upholstered in Schumacher’s Arborvitae fabric, and crisp white drapes trimmed in an ocean blue Samuel & Sons applique tape. “Kelley had to talk me into some of the trims in the house, but I think they add something special,” Cusack says.

Throughout the home, “we worked with a lot of the furniture she already had, reusing things by refinishing or reupholstering them,” Proxmire says. In the dining room, there’s a vintage sideboard repainted in a muted gray, and the home office holds a beloved lounge chair and ottoman that Proxmire refreshed with a springlike green Kravet velvet, finished with blue cording. “I live in this space, and mainly in this chair, with my computer or a book,” Cusack says. 

Wallpaper, a constant in the project, lines the backs of the office’s built-in bookcases. Artwork from the owner’s world travels fills the room—a wooden Brazilian wildcat under the delicate desk, a papyrus print of an ancient Egyptian goddess on the wall. “This is my power room, and that’s Isis,” Cusack jokes.

A small private hallway connects the office to Cusack’s primary suite, one of two in the house. “She wanted a ground floor owner’s suite, but we also did one upstairs for resale value,” Olson says. The suite on the first floor holds a clean-lined, all-white bathroom, outsize walk-in closet, and a large bedroom overlooking the spacious backyard. 

In that boudoir, Proxmire brought in the greens from the rest of the house as well as a serene pink. “Hilary loved these Lee Jofa toiles, which are so in and so retro,” Proxmire says. A new headboard upholstered in Jofa’s Floral Bouquet plays off a vintage bench recovered in emerald velvet, along with the window curtains in Schumacher’s small-scale Duma Diamond print in white and green cotton. 

“It’s a very restful room, and it helps that she had fantastic art from Bermuda to hang in there,” Proxmire says. Small landscapes of buildings and shorelines tie the bedroom to Cusack’s island heritage. “All of those pictures have stories, whether it’s a painting of a cottage my family owned or prints by Bermuda artists,” Cusack says. 

The open floor plan space at the rear of the house features multiple windows overlooking the backyard. Goozh outfitted the generously proportioned all-white kitchen with cabinets from Hagerstown Kitchens and Mara Blanca quartz countertops. “She asked for a white space that didn’t feel cold,” he says.  

Proxmire added outsize drum pendants from Visual Comfort and upholstered stools in a vinylized fabric (better for smaller kids) to pull up to the kitchen island. “There’s room for everyone in the big open kitchen, particularly with such a large multifunctional island. It’s been great with my grandchildren for everything from making rock candy to rolling homemade pretzels,” says Cusack, who says she spends a lot of time in the kitchen. “I love the deep Rohl sink and the induction cooktop—it has clean lines and a quick boil point.” The window over the sink is framed with a valance in Thibaut’s Mitford fabric. A matching wallpaper went up in the adjoining laundry room—yep, the house has two—which does double duty as a mudroom.

The kitchen adjoins the informal dining area and a great room. The great room’s fireplace faces a new Kravet/Lee Jofa sectional sofa in a camel-colored herringbone tweed as well as armchairs Proxmire redid in—what else?—an island green. 

Just a few feet away, a screened-in porch outfitted with sofas and decorated with an oversize plate Cusack purchased in Italy is both a private retreat and the site of occasional family celebrations. “During the pandemic, we had Christmas dinner out here all wrapped up in coats,” she says. 

Best of all, the porch has a terrific view of the arched garden gate between Cusack’s backyard and her daughter’s. It’s a whimsical feature Cusack wanted to re-create after seeing one in The Secret Garden on Broadway. “That’s the emotional heart of the home,” she says, “seeing that every day.”

Jennifer Barger is a local design and travel writer. Follow her on Instagram @dcjnell.

This story appears in the November/December issue of Bethesda Magazine.