Creative collaboration

Teamwork among owners, architect and builder yields dream home in Chatham

By Terry Ward Libby

From the start, the chemistry was right between the Carole and John Dowd and the team of professionals they signed on to build their new house in Chatham.

When they decided to build, they made an appointment with company president, Jim Gable who, in turn, brought in house designer Mark Zibrat.

The first project meeting with Gable and Zibrat took place around the dining room table in the former Dowd home, where Carole and John pointed out the features they liked and disliked about it. They were impressed with the fact that the builder and designer asked them a lot of “lifestyle” questions.

“They were good listeners,” said John, “the first set of plans they developed were ninety-five percent right on the money.”

Carole comes originally from the mountains of Tennessee, and in her home office she proudly displays a panoramic photo of Lookout Mountain, where she grew up. After many summers on Cape Cod, she says, she’s come to love New England, too. She comes to Chatham by way of Chattanooga. “Mind you, I had seen the ocean before,” she says with the easy-going Southern charm she still retains.

John is a native of Massachusetts, but the Dowds’ home base is Vienna, Virginia, just outside Washington D.C., where John works as a criminal defense lawyer and where he has had a role in some of the most high-profile trials and legal proceedings of recent years. His clients have included Senator John McCain and, more recently, former Department of Justice official, Monica Goodling. In his Chatham abode, however, one would never guess that Dowd is a man grappling with controversial issues under a national spotlight. He seems to be mostly focused on his flowerbeds and the “riot of color” he says they add to his new front lawn.

From childhood, John has vacationed on Cape Cod and, during his teen years, he took on summer jobs. In 1975, his parents, Mary and Paul Dowd, purchased a small retirement home in Chatham. Eventually, that property passed on to Carole and John, who have five married children and eleven grandchildren, ranging in age from just ten months to fourteen years, making up an extended family of twenty-two. By 2006, the Dowds had outgrown the original house, one that designer Zibrat describes as “a typical Cape Cod style summer home, probably built in the 1950s.” The decision was made to raze the old house and build an entirely new one.

The primary design goal set for the new house was to make it highly functional and child-friendly, a place that would comfortably accommodate a crowd.

To read more of this story, see the November/December issue of Cape Cod VIEW on newsstands now. Don't miss a single issue of the VIEW, subscribe today.