A lot of things on Martha’s Vineyard feel untouched by time. Jessica Harris’s 18th-century home in the sleepy town of Chilmark is one of them. A meandering, tree-lined country road leads to the 70-acre property where Harris, 50, lives with her husband Matt, 52, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, and their six children.
“We never imagined that we would own something here,” says Harris, the former host and producer of the weekly NPR podcast From Scratch (she now sits on the board of the biomaterials start-up Ecovative and The High Line in Manhattan). The couple first discovered the Vineyard when renting a cottage in Chilmark. For the next decade, they visited every August until one summer, while perusing the real estate listings, this property’s acreage caught their eye. It had sat empty for about 12 years. “But when I first glanced at the decaying house on the hill, and the sparse landscape with the adjacent barn, I felt immediately I was home,” Harris continues. It recalled The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton, a book Harris’s mother read to her as a child.
The living room of the South House, with custom sofas, a Caucasian Soumak rug, nesting tables by Wormley for Dunbar and Stilnovo table lamp (on left) © Kristin Teig
