The Collector | Home Tour

Louis Caldarella’s story starts with a chair. 

Specifically, a 17th-century Italian Baroque armchair spotted at an antiques shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Caldarella was attending Harvard. One might think a college student in Cambridge by way of Queens might have better things to spend time, money, and energy on than a dusty piece of furniture, yet Caldarella was fixated. “I was on financial aid with three jobs, but Heidi made it happen,” he says.

Filled with artwork and warmed by a vintage hearth, this sitting room in Louis Caldarella’s Concord home features such gems as an Eastlake sofa, a Saarinen tulip table, and a Sleepy Hollow chair that purportedly came from the White House.
Credit: Eric Roth

He is referring to Cambridge-based interior designer Heidi Pribell, who Caldarella still credits 30 years later for the fearlessness of his collections. And boy, does Caldarella collect. That Italian Baroque chair, which he had upholstered in vintage Fortuny fabric procured from a curator at the Boston Athenaeum, sits in a house chock-full of antiques and vintage finds.

Jagged stone stairs punctuated by vintage pillars lead to the screen door of Caldarella’s Concord, Massachusetts, home: a 1,200-square-foot condo tucked into a clapboard house built in 1872 that was once a manse for the Trinitarian Congregational Church. Transitioning from the lush outdoor gardens is a bit of jolt, since the porch has a Spartan feel, with rickety wooden furniture, a butterfly cage made from found sycamore branches, and casual rows of no fewer than two dozen pairs of shoes.

Step fully inside and the place warms up, revealing itself as a collector’s haven. Caldarella has spent more than 20 years restoring and filling his home—once a hodgepodge of shag carpeting and other 1970s-era remnants—with furnishings collected during his travels, imbuing it with a sense of history and personal meaning. A learning specialist and tutor by profession, he is a self-described teacher, traveler, collector, and recycler to the core, and his home reflects every aspect of this persona.

In addition to working for a nearby independent school, Caldarella tutors private clients in his living room, where the tools of his trade abound. He says his students learn best with original specimens and primary sources, and that vintage materials can help relieve anxiety around learning. The relics, many picked up at flea markets in Paris (he has a recurring Parisian cat-sitting gig), are as beautiful as they are useful, such as a 19th-century brass microscope complete with slides (marine algae, eel scales, and an earwig’s head are just a few).

Every step begs a story. Neoclassical dining chairs with horsehair upholstery came from Goodspeed’s Book Shop in Boston, where Caldarella worked as the head of Americana for six years before the store was shuttered in 1995. Also acquired there was a bookcase now built into the basement staircase. The mini library includes an illuminated version of A Christmas Carol, from when he was a rare-book dealer in London, and an 18th-century illustrated folio of Aesop’s Fables.