To The Nines in New Canaan

PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREA CERASO & NICHOLAS VENEZIA

Jordan and Andrew Terner are delightful. They’re entertaining and enjoyable, family-focused, and fun. They moved into their fabulous farmhouse, across the street from the Glass House, in 2017. And their daughter, Cybil, was born in 2023. …They are an ‘it’ couple in New Canaan these days!

Jordan, 40, is a sought-after Park Avenue plastic surgeon in a prestigious private practice called Manhattan Plastic Surgery. “Of course I can’t name names,” he says, “...except for Amy Schumer, who talks about me in her routine! I do primarily cosmetic surgery, including mostly breasts and tummies, as well as a lot of injectables - where I teach new approaches and techniques.” Jordan is friendly and funny, confident but not conceited, bold but not brash, and obviously quite smart. His family moved from Manhattan to a horsey community called Smokerise near Kinnelon, New Jersey when he was a kid…and, as one result, Jordan played Polo for Cornell. He was then selected for early admission to the prestigious Humanities and Medicine Program at Mount Sinai Medical School. He also completed a two-year Doris Duke Research Fellowship at Yale in Craniofacial Surgery and Pediatric Plastic Surgery, and then more training at Albert Einstein, before joining the renowned Dr. Anthony LaBruna in private practice.

Andrew, 37, works in asset management. He’s a bit more reserved than Jordan, but just as warm and welcoming, and Andrew is clearly Jordan’s intellectual partner. He also started-out in Manhattan and his family moved to Bronxville, New York where he attended Bronxville School. He went to UC Berkeley for his undergraduate studies, and on to work in asset management at Goldman Sachs - for two years in San Francisco, then eight in New York…during which time he also earned an MBA from Columbia. He joined Blackstone in 2019, and will be joining Bain Capital in the fall. 

Though they are in many ways the prototypically staid New Canaan power couple, they have an ebullience about the world, each other, and their life in New Canaan that feels particularly young, energetic, and fresh. “So if you want to know,” Jordan starts, “I picked-up Andrew! We met in 2011 at a charity event for young professionals at the Gay and Lesbian Center in the West Village. I’d just come out. Andrew ignored my Facebook messages for about six months, then I finally convinced him to go on a first date at The Raines Law Room. I drove up in a British Racing Green Porsche 911…and so we got started immediately talking about our mutual passion for cars. …Not too long thereafter, I started to renovate my apartment and needed a place to stay ‘for a few weeks’ - along with my Golden Retriever, Chase, and my St. Bernard, Max. We moved-into Andrew’s one bedroom downtown - and Andrew already had a roommate at the time, a guy named Peter, who definitely wasn’t expecting me and two huge dogs to move in! My renovation took 6 months -not a few weeks! - and by the time that was over Andrew and I moved back to my apartment as a couple - or as a family if you count the dogs, like we do!”

“After that, but before we were married in 2015, we bought an apartment on Horatio Street in the West Village, and renovated it. Then we bought a house in East Hampton near the Buckskill Tennis Club,” Andrew adds, “but it wasn’t enough for us to just have a weekend place. We were looking for something that felt more stable and residential, and more country than suburban. New Canaan is the ideal! It’s so wonderfully…conventional!”

…Maybe so…but everything about the way Jordan and Andrew live seems pretty extraordinary! 

For starters, they’ve turned their home into something like a kid’s petting zoo…they have 2 Miniature Horses, 9 Peacocks - 2 White and the rest India Blues, a 40-year old African Gray Parrot named Lucky inherited from a family friend, Koi, 3 Golden Retrievers, and 3 Cats, including 2 peculiarly large Mainecoons - all under the care of Chris, the house manager.

They have an outstanding collection of cars, storing most in a garage they have in Norwalk. “Mostly green cars, we love the color green” Jordan explains the couple’s eccentric passion. “We’ve both been really into cars since we were little kids. Andrew even wrote his undergraduate admissions essay about automotive design. My dad died when I was 15, but he was really into cars, especially American muscle cars, and he used to take us to these ‘doo-wop’ style car shows around New Jersey. Our taste is a bit different…and we like to drive them! As part of what I would describe as an eclectic collection, we have a ‘59 Citroen concept car, a ‘94 Lamborghini Diablo, a number of Jags including a ‘94 XJ220 and ’67 E-Type, several ‘90s and ‘00s Mercedes, a big old Rolls Corniche Convertible, and a ‘60 Cadillac Series 62 - which is black, with a red interior, and a white convertible top, to name a few.”

And then there’s the Veeshum 50 Classic that Jordan and Andrew keep at a marina in Rowayton. Andrew smiles just thinking about it…“We’re on the water just 20 minutes from home and it’s easy to take the boat to Sag Harbor or Rhode Island even just for the day.”

…Still, it’s the Terner’s home  that’s most exceptional! 

With bones dating back to 1772, the completely modernized American Farmhouse and Barn is picture-perfect inside and out. Andrew says, “For us it doesn’t feel old, but it doesn’t feel new either. We feel like we’re on vacation when we’re only an hour commute from Manhattan. We had over 150 friends and family for Cybil’s First Birthday, and intend to use the house and the property for many more celebrations to come.”

A large outdoor patio and a particularly welcoming and cozy front porch are outdoor spaces that are clearly well-used, but also pristinely maintained, and feel more like true additional rooms of the house than ancillary outdoor spaces. 

The indoor pool house is spectacular, and the half-sunken pool provides a clear centerpiece for the ethereal space, decked-out with flawlessly situated greenery. Surrounding sitting areas are Adirondack-inspired - and reminiscent of Saranac Lake, where Jordan and Andrew were engaged, and Lake Placid, where the couple were married. It’s playful and yet flawless and collected. A giant antler chandelier, an antique canoe hanging over the center of the pool, a taxidermy bear at the edge of the pool, and other adornments make the whole space unique and memorable.

The interior decorating looks like the Polo Bar or a window at Ralph Lauren’s flagship store in the Rhinelander mansion on Madison Avenue, on steroids…and Jordan takes that comparison as a high compliment. “I did all the decorating. As they used to say, ‘down to the ashtrays’. We shopped together for all the antiques and items like the saddlery resting on the bannister in the den, but the rest was my doing,” Jordan says with obvious satisfaction. “Ralph Lauren has been a big inspiration for a long time. And not just when it comes to my style of decorating, or actually having horses in the barn…I mean it in a much more general way. I buy-in to the whole idea of creating your own lifestyle. The way everything looks and feels really does shape your experience. …We like who we are in this place.”

And the entire house flows seamlessly, tied together by beautiful old wooden beams, deep rich colors, and layers of unified patterns and textures, art, books, and special collections. Jordan shares, “The scalloped murano bowl in the entry foyer was our wedding gift from Andrew’s brother, who’s passed away. It was really important to us that it be a focal point in our house and something that we could look at to remember him by every day.” Each room is delightfully revealed past a long hallway or through a thick wooden archway, and each room has its own personality, theme, and palette, while they’re all in keeping with the historical nature of the house and the overarching decorating scheme.

The dining room is situated in the original 1772 structure, and the wall still displays an original hand-painted mural, with a map of the area as it was then. The mural is continued up in what will become Cybil’s room when she graduates from the nursery, and shows a depiction of God’s Acre in New Canaan - and it looks remarkably similar to the way it looks today.”

The formal living room is connected through the center hall, which is complete with a wet bar. Lacquered ceilings give the feeling of additional height, and turquoise walls give the otherwise formal space a rather playful aesthetic. Jordan loves to collect antique rugs and a large Chinese art deco rug anchors the room. The two mustard velvet sofas were one of the first things purchased for the house and are one of the few new things the couple owns. A side door reveals a hidden screened-in porch - the ideal place to curl up with a book and hide away.

Upstairs, the hallway is a focal point and defining room unto its own with plenty of places to relax or take in the splendor. A curtained nook original to the design of the house has a built-in daybed. The original master bedroom is repurposed as a guest suite, and the primary suite sits at the end of the hall in a new wing of the house, renovated with double height vaulted ceilings and generous square footage. 

“On a typical Saturday or Sunday morning,” Andrew describes, “our routine is to take one of our special cars out to breakfast, maybe stop in our garage in Norwalk to swap for the one car we want to drive that day, and then take a drive up to Kent or into the Hudson Valley. In summer, we’ll drive over to the boat and go out for at least a few hours. Then there’s often a party or a dinner engagement. We feel like we’ve met a great crowd here. The lifestyle is wonderful! We love New Canaan so much we convinced Jordan’s sister to move here! She and her husband and their two kids bought a great house on West Road, and having all the kids growing-up together and family living right here in town is so extra-special!”