After dinner on a wintry Vermont evening, innkeeper Robert Dean II leads guests to a drawing room, excitedly showing them the latest treasure about to grace the walls of Juniper Hill Inn.

Raising the lid on a carefully padded carton, he reveals a painting of nearby Mt. Ascutney. Though the artist is contemporary, the subdued colors and symmetrical framing suggest a classical landscape. The style fits with something the original owners of this fabulous mansion might have purchased in the Gilded Age.

Dean has focused his New York interior designer’s eye and love of history on lavishly restoring Juniper Hill – an inn gaining notice as one of the most elegant in New England. He also wants to boost the local community.

In fact, Gary Milek, creator of the newly acquired landscape, belongs to a recently revived Cornish Colony of artists, which Dean supports.  The first colony was founded across the river in New Hampshire 125 years ago to nurture painters, sculptors and landscape designers during a golden age of American art. The first family to live in what is now the inn, the Evarts, were turn-of-the-century supporters.

Not far away, the home and studios of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), a Cornish Colony sculptor known for impressive public monuments, is open to the public as a National Historic Site. Dean cheerleads for Saint-Gaudens. He also sits on the board of the Cornish Colony Museum and helps run its vibrant gallery in the former firehouse of Windsor, Vt., a once-thriving factory and railroad town and the original state capital.

Plans are being laid to make the inn New England’s Living Show House by Memorial Day weekend 2010. That means every room and most of the grounds will be refurbished (again) by name decorators.

Dean’s multiple enthusiasms energize all of these projects, but none gets more passion or investment from him and his partner Ari Nikki (the two won the 2008 Vermont Hospitality Council B&B Innkeeper of the Year award) than enlivening the look and feel of the inn itself.

“Some day we want to restore the carriage house,” Dean proclaims to a circle of listeners, interrupting his own telling of a benign ghost story set in that building. “Of course, we’ll have to save our pennies.”

Clearly no pennies have been pinched to date in the effort to make Juniper Hill sumptuous and comfortable. Just heating the 15,000-square-foot mansion costs $6,000 a month.

The home dates from1902 when Maxwell Evarts, a boyhood friend of Teddy Roosevelt who went on to became legal counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad, built his family’s fifth residence, “the summer cottage,” on a low peak overlooking Windsor.

Back then, the property comprised 1,000 acres, and because the forest had been clearcut, the views were 360 degrees. Now new trees have grown up, and though the land is reduced, it still supports a vegetable garden and grape arbor to supply the dining room. A couple of hundred acres donated by the Evarts remain preserved as town forest, meaning most of the land between the inn and the town will never be developed.

The grounds also include an outdoor pool. As usual sparing no expense on “romance for our brides and guests,” Dean wants the spring 2010 makeover to include the not-so-incidental task of moving the pool and rebuilding it as a picturesque, concrete-lined pond.

Though a gigantic dining table is one of the only original furnishings left in the house, history exudes from every nook of the mansion. Presidential connections don’t hurt. In addition to Roosevelt, who was a frequent guest, Presidents Taft, Wilson, Coolidge and Eisenhower all visited or stayed overnight. One section of the house is called the West Wing.

There are 16 guestrooms (Dean calls them “guest chambers”) and each features a different décor, including period wallpaper and antiques.  Bathrooms offer claw-foot bathtubs, and some of the rooms have wood-burning or gas fireplaces. But Dean wants this house to be “living” history, and he is unafraid to mix in reproductions, contemporary art and whimsical knickknacks. During the holidays, a collection of 42 Santa Claus dolls was on display in the library, and Dean assured visitors that at least that many more Saint Nicks remained unseen in storage in the basement.

Many books in the library are just spaceholders, like Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, but the art on the walls is spectacular, representing an array of Dean’s New York friends and clients. His philosophy of interior design emphasizes acquisition of decorative items that reflect the owners’ personalities and maintain or even grow in value.

High tea includes the usual treats and a tour of the premises. Dinner is upscale. I can vouch for the panko parmesan crusted chicken breasts with lemon thyme sauce and the pumpkin ravioli with sage walnut butter sauce. Chef Lyda’s killer cheesecake with fresh berries is killer indeed.

“I have been to this inn since 1987,” said one local resident. “Earlier owners tried, but Robert and Ari have a feeling of the period.”

Happy traveling!

CAPTIONS: 1. Inn co-owner Robert Dean unpacks the most recent of his artistic acquisitions. 2. An elegant staircase contributes to the elegant flavor of the inn. 3. A Tiffany lamp is just one of the treasures with which the inn is furnished. 4. Each guestroom is decorated differently, but all are in the style of the early 19th century.