Before & After: They Found the Plans for Their Family Farmhouse—and Made a Surprising Discovery

After locating the blueprints in a drawer, two siblings learn that their Ontario home was updated by a famed British architect who went on to design London’s brutalist Barbican Centre.

Having grown up in this historic Ontario farmhouse, the owners, two siblings, have long known about the local lore attached to it. For starters, the house had been previously owned by Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson Lay and his wife, Beth. "We had a family dog that was named after the admiral," says the older sibling. "There was sort of a mythology around the house for our parents."

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Melissa Dalton
Dwell Contributor
Melissa Dalton is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon, who has been writing for Dwell since 2017. Read more of her work about design and architecture at melissadalton.net.