For This Architect, the Garage Isn’t an Afterthought
Patrick Ahearn designs carriage houses and car barns for automobile enthusiasts.
Patrick Ahearn designs carriage houses and car barns for automobile enthusiasts.
When Patrick Ahearn was growing up in Long Island in the 1950s and 1960s, he became obsessed with cars. He knew every model down to its hub caps, which he would render in intricate drawings.
But a high-school guidance counsellor discouraged his dream of being a car designer, telling him he’d need to get an engineering degree, and suggested architecture instead.
Now, Mr. Ahearn, 71, is a nationally known architect, famous for his many hundreds of often large, New England style, classic houses that stylistically blend into the background on Martha’s Vineyard, Wellesley and up and down Cape Cod. His goal is to make the homes appear timeless and authentic, as if they have been there forever—to give them what he refers to as “implied history.”
His projects tend to look alike, and they are easily identifiable as his work. They often include large, luxurious car barns and carriage houses filled with vintage cars. Many of his clients are baby boomer men who share his automotive enthusiasm and become his friends.
“The garage has to be as nice as the rest of the house,” says David Malm, 57, managing partner of a private-equity firm, who has owned several homes and car barns designed by Mr. Ahearn. “You don’t want to go from a house with millwork and brick into a garage with slab concrete and plaster on the walls. It’s jarring,” Mr. Malm says.
Mr. Malm’s Ahearn-designed, stand-alone car barn on Martha’s Vineyard is on a property he bought for around $4 million in 2019. It has brick floors in a herringbone pattern, wood beams and a club-like area with leather chairs, a bar and a television and living spaces upstairs. He is currently renting it out, but usually he keeps his red 1971 MG there. He also has a carriage house in Dover, Mass., part of a $2 million home renovation and new garage project, where he keeps his three Aston Martins. “They’re such beautiful cars. You have to put them somewhere nice,” he says.
Mr. Ahearn says the lines of his garages, like many of the homes he designs, are inspired by classic cars, with roof overhangs that nod to streamlined headlights and windows with frames like the teeth of a 1960 Corvette’s grille. He is inspired by the simple, timeless designs and the time period they represent. “The world was a better place in the 1950s,” he says.
He matches the car a person drives to the project he designs for them, using it as part of the narrative, or script, he creates for how the person lives, which he says helps them pick appropriate fixtures and materials.
“I can tell a lot about a person by their car. Sometimes it determines whether I do their house or not,” says Mr. Ahearn, who has blue eyes, a thick moustache and wears button down shirts and blue blazers.
He tells of one client, the CEO of a major office supply company, who drove a beat-up Toyota Corolla. “That told me a lot about how cheap he was,” says Mr. Ahearn. Throughout the design process, the client was always questioning the cost of the materials and fixtures. “I had to educate him on why it’s not just a vanilla box,” he says.
He recently asked the client, did he still own the Corolla? He did. “He says he’s just not a car guy,” says Mr. Ahearn, throwing up his hands.
Chris Ruggles, 52, a retired software engineer who is a “car guy,” hired Mr. Ahearn to design a 1,200-square-foot carriage house in Wellesley. He knew about Mr. Ahearn’s affinity for cars because every carriage house he liked was designed by him. “He has an easily recognizable style,” says Mr. Ruggles.
The one Mr. Ahearn designed for Mr. Ruggles, for about $600,000, has brick floors, white beadboard walls, a high ceiling and leather chairs for hanging out. The exterior, with its dormers, shutters and shingled roof, makes it look like another house. The doors look like old fashioned carriage house doors but swing open automatically.
Mr. Ruggles likes to spend time sitting quietly in the carriage house, sometimes listening to music, just being around his Albert Blue 1970 Porsche 911E, his Signal Orange 1984 Porsche 911 RSR Tribute and his Old English White 1960 MGA Roadster.
“It’s a Zen thing. It’s relaxing,” he says. His wife, Christina Ruggles, has recently started having dinner parties in the garage among the cars with her friends. “It’s turned out to be a nice little event space,” he says.
The parties that Martha’s Vineyard real-estate broker and contractor Gerret Conover, 58, holds in his Ahearn-designed car barn in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard are wilder: he dresses up mannequins and seats them in his silver 1967 Chevrolet Corvette convertible and his Pearl White 1967 Pontiac GTO.
In Mr. Conover’s garage, which cost about $450,000 to build, the signature Ahearn brick floors accommodate a car lift, the cathedral ceiling houses a massive chandelier, and the walls—premium grade pine with eight coats of varnish—are crowded with what he calls “automobilia”: early to-Mid 20th Century enamel and neon service station signs and vintage calendars. An old Mobil gas station pump and a soda machine complete the look.
Mr. Ahearn’s own 2-acre compound in Wellesley has three separate garage spaces and centres around a 1936 farmhouse he bought for $525,000 in 1991 and renovated, adding two wings, all painted it in his signature Ahearn white (half Benjamin Moore Linen White, half Benjamin Moore China White).
In 2011 he bought an adjacent property for $825,000 and built two new garage spaces: A carriage house and a car barn, for a total of around $2 million. The carriage house’s old-fashioned looking Essex Green stable doors automatically swing open to reveal the four most-prized of his 18 cars (a number that’s always changing, as he buys and sells them): a 968 American Motors AMC AMX in Matador red, a 1956 Ford Thunderbird in peacock turquoise, a 1953 Studebaker Commander in regal red and a 1964 Studebaker Avanti in turquoise.
Mr. Ahearn’s car barn is 4,000-square-feet and has two-stories and a loft. The lower level is what he calls his sanctuary—where he works and hangs out, amid his 1958 365A Porsche Speedster in fjord green, his 1964 356 C Porsche coupe in dolphin grey and his 1970 280 SL Mercedes-Benz in beige grey. Three leather chairs, a big flat screen TV, an electric train set with a model Porsche dealership and dozens of little Porsche model cars, among a sea of other car memorabilia, set the mood.
The intersection of car design and architecture, sometimes dubbed “carchitecture,” goes back to when the first automobiles hit the road over a century ago, leaving a “lasting imprint on the design of our built environment,” according to the introduction to the Museum of Modern Art in New York’s current Automania exhibit. Le Corbusier compared car design to that of ancient Greek temples, while Frank Lloyd Wright, who was obsessed with cars and designing spaces for them, incorporated garages into signature homes like the Robie House in Chicago and Fallingwater outside Pittsburgh.
Nowadays, architects design condo buildings around cars, such as the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., where each of the 60 units has built-in parking in the apartment, separated from the living area by a glass wall to allow views of the vehicles.
Born in 1950, Mr. Ahearn grew up in Levittown, the planned production home community on Long Island developed by William Levitt that was composed of nearly identical Cape Cod—and ranch-style houses created for GIs returning from war. It was to the suburb what the Model T is to the car, says Mr. Ahearn: a pioneer of mass-produced good design that changed society. He credits the community for influencing his designs by making him appreciate the balance between density and scale and that warmth can accompany sparseness.
After graduating in 1973 from Syracuse University with undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture, the first in his family to attend college, Mr. Ahearn packed up his lime green VW Bus and headed to Boston, where a girlfriend was attending law school. He was hired at Architects Collaborative in Cambridge and Benjamin Thompson & Associates, where he worked on the adaptive reuse of Faneuil Hall Marketplace.
In 1978, he started his own practice, converting buildings to condos in Boston’s Back Bay and working on national and international hotel projects. He pivoted to renovating and building single family homes, expanding his now 21-person office to include Martha’s Vineyard in the 1990s, where he has designed hundreds of homes. His projects, ranging between $500,000 and $5 million, now span the country and Canada.
His second and current wife, Marsha Ahearn, had three young children when they met in 1987 and drove what Mr. Ahearn describes as an unremarkable blue Volvo station wagon. He married her anyway in 1989. “Í thought I could correct that,” he says.
Mrs. Ahearn doesn’t go into the garage spaces at her home in Wellesley very often. The series of 15 Chevrolet Suburbans she’s owned stay in the driveway. That is partly for convenience: Since the carriage house and the car barn aren’t connected to the house, they wouldn’t help protect her in rain and snow.
But it’s also that her cars just don’t fit. “I don’t get garage space,” she says
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Melbourne’s lifestyle appeal is driving record population growth — and rising rents. Here are the six most expensive suburbs to rent a house in right now.
Melbourne is considered Australia’s most liveable city. In fact, Melbourne competes on the global stage, consistently ranking among Time Out’s top cities to live in the world and ranking fourth in 2025. Melbourne is a cultural mecca filled with arts, x, and the country’s best sporting events.
It’s the lifestyle factor that has seen Melbourne’s population grow by over 142,000 people over the 23/24 financial year, largely driven by overseas migration. With increased population comes increased demand for properties, particularly in the rental market.
Akin to Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, Melbourne’s South Eastern suburbs, towards Bayside and the water, dominate the most expensive suburbs listed to rent across the Victorian capital.
In this article, we’ve examined the six most expensive suburbs to rent a house in Melbourne right now, according to property data analytics firm Cotality (formerly CoreLogic).
Median purchase: $3.15m
Median rent: $1,353
Brighton is Melbourne’s most expensive suburb to rent a house, and it’s easy to see why. A blend of grand period homes and modern architectural builds line the wide, tree-filled streets. The suburb is synonymous with luxury, and rental properties—especially those close to the famed Brighton Beach and its iconic bathing boxes—are snapped up quickly. Vacancy rates sit at a tight 0.9 per cent.
The Neighbourhood
Brighton offers an enviable mix of a beachside lifestyle and convenient shopping and dining. With access to top schools like Brighton Grammar and Firbank, plus Church Street’s boutiques and the Royal Brighton Yacht Club, the Bayside suburb is the complete package for Melbourne’s high-end renters.
Median purchase: $2.8m
Median rent: $1,313
Long known for its timeless Victorian and Edwardian homes, Malvern is a leafy inner suburb with prestige appeal. Many properties here are fully renovated period homes, featuring extensive gardens and original features that appeal to families and executives.
The Neighbourhood
Malvern boasts a refined atmosphere with a strong community feel. Glenferrie Road and High Street offer upscale cafes, boutiques, and grocers, while schools like De La Salle and St Joseph’s make the suburb particularly attractive to families.
Median purchase: $2.29m
Median rent: $1,253
Nestled along the Bayside coast, Black Rock has seen steady growth in both house prices and rents in recent years. Larger blocks and a quieter, more laid-back vibe than neighbouring suburbs make this a coveted spot for renters seeking both space and lifestyle.
The Neighbourhood
Black Rock is home to the picturesque Half Moon Bay and scenic cliffside walks. The suburb blends beachside charm with village convenience, offering local cafés, golf courses, and direct access to some of Melbourne’s best coastal trails.
Median purchase: $2.21m
Median rent: $1,199
Sandringham, next door to Black Rock, offers more of the same as its neighbouring suburb, at similar prices. Sandringham too ticks the box for laid-back waterside recreation, with the majority of homes in walking distance to the sand and charming village shops.
The Neighbourhood
This is a family-friendly suburb with a strong community vibe. Sandringham Village, with its mix of cafes, wine bars, and boutiques, sits just a short walk from the train station and beach. The area also offers excellent sporting facilities and parks. Sandringham Harbour is the local landmark, a popular destination for boating, fishing, and waterfront views from Sandringham Yacht Club.
Median purchase: $3.15m
Median rent: $1,179
Canterbury is the innermost Melbourne suburb on this list. It is considered one of Melbourne’s most prestigious suburbs, defined by grand family homes, generally over-the-top opulent new builds with French Provincial façades behind gated entries.
The Neighbourhood
Canterbury is anchored by the exclusive “Golden Mile” precinct and is surrounded by elite private schools such as Camberwell Grammar and Strathcona. Maling Road provides a quaint village feel, while the area’s lush green spaces complete the picture of prestige.
Median purchase: $2.3m
Median rent: $1,171
It’s back to Bayside for the sixth and final suburb on the priciest rental areas in Melbourne. Hampton is not too dissimilar to Brighton, with a main High Street providing convenience and the beach rounding out the relaxed lifestyle found on the bay. The suburb has undergone significant gentrification, with many original homes replaced by contemporary builds.
The Neighbourhood
With a stretch of clean, family-friendly beach and the bustling Hampton Street shopping strip, Hampton has everything renters could want—from stylish cafes to gourmet grocers and boutique fitness studios. Its proximity to Brighton and Sandringham only adds to its appeal.
Median purchase: $460,000
Median rent: $430
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Melton South—roughly 40km west of the CBD—offers the most affordable rental market. With a median rent of under $450 a week, it’s less than a third of the weekly rent in Brighton. The suburb attracts families and first-home renters seeking value and larger land lots.
Toorak is considered the Point Piper of Melbourne. Boasting even more billionaires than Sydney’s harbourside hotspot, Toorak is home to Melbourne’s most expensive houses, and reportedly Australia’s most expensive house sale if the 1860s Italianate mansion Coonac settles at over $130 million.
The suburb has some of the best educational institutions in Melbourne, as well as luxury homes on the Yarra, two train stations, and a central shopping precinct undergoing a full transformation with several mixed-use retail and residential developments. It is definitely the place to be.
As of May 2025, Brighton is Melbourne’s most expensive suburb to rent a house.
As of May 2025, Melton South is Melbourne’s most expensive suburb to rent a house.
As of May 2025, Toorak is Melbourne’s most expensive suburb to buy a house.
As of May 2025, Beaumaris is Melbourne’s most expensive suburb to buy a unit
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