While “cottagecore” trends and aesthetics circulate social media, romanticizing the rural life of yore, developer Bruno Schickel has actually brought a cottage community to life in the modern-day town of Caroline, New York.
The development is home to 140 charming, colorful tiny home cottages on a 40-acre lot. Its design, while quaint and adorable, has one specific purpose: to help neighbors get to know each other.
They’re called the Boiceville Cottages, and they range from 540 square feet to 1,100 square feet. Models include studio apartments, tiny homes, one-bedroom lofts, and three varying sizes of two-bedroom homes.
Rent starts at $1,545 a month, and the community is inspired by an actual storybook.
Schickel has long been a general contractor, building and renovating single-family homes. But in the late 1990s, while reading a children’s book called “Miss Rumphius” to his daughters, they were all enamored by its illustrations.
“In this book, there are beautiful illustrations of this little gothic gingerbread cottage on the coast of Maine, and the village where she would bicycle through and plant her lupines,” Schickel told The Daily Mail in 2023.
“It really was inspiration for me to design and create something that looked like that.”
He started with a few rental cottages in the storybook style, nearly three decades ago. And now, it’s a whole little village.
“The more I built, the better people liked them,” Schickel told Fast Company this year. “It was an interesting dynamic, because originally people were drawn to the fairy-tale cottage. And then people started being drawn to the community that was created.”
Placed strategically in clusters of three, the cottages are awash with community. They aren’t excessively close together, so people have enough privacy, but every day, they’re still bound to run into each other.
There are book clubs, yoga classes, and art markets, and that’s just what’s listed on the Boiceville Cottages’ Facebook group. A flexible pet policy is enacted, and a dog park exists on the property, along with a community “meeting house” available for free communal events.
“My husband and I lived in one of the original cottages for a little over a year, and it is still my favorite place that I’ve lived,” former resident Megan D. shared in a testimonial on the property’s website.
“Our son had his first birthday there. His first head first dive out of the crib, his first steps on the sidewalk out front. Two of our best friends lived right next door and we could talk and laugh through the windows.”
Megan went on to write about how she made friends with neighbors and took care of a “sweet elderly lady” who lived on her own.
“[It was] like we had our own little utopia that I never wanted to leave,” she concluded.
The cottages are in a relatively rural area, near Ithaca and Cornell, but there are winding roads that make both driving and walking feel safe, as well as a bus stop for car-free residents.
The idyllic community, according to Schickel, was possible because of Caroline’s zoning laws — or lack thereof.
“The one reason why I ended up building there was because there was no zoning in Caroline,” Schickel told Fast Company. “I am a guy who thinks zoning, by design, just chokes off innovation, creativity. It creates uniformity.”
Schickel has built two similar cottage communities in other small towns, which then tried to pass a zoning law after the project had been built.
“There’s a complete discrimination against rentals,” Schickel said. “And there’s a discrimination against small [houses].”
But the love people have for these cottage communities — and their good neighbors — makes a compelling case for more of them.
Small businesses built nearby boost local economies, and the size of the homes is practical in a country where rent prices and housing shortages loom large.
Plus, above all, people are looking for community. And they can find it at Boiceville Cottages.
“This tiny house community is instantly welcoming,” resident Lori W. said in a testimonial. “It’s a place where you make friends (human and animal) for life.”
Boiceville Cottages boast a 98-100% occupancy rate year-round.
“It's an incredible community,” Schickel told The Daily Mail. “And people absolutely love living there.”
Header image courtesy of Boiceville Cottages
