Mr. Aldrich, whom everyone calls Ricky, was at Harvard in 1963 when his grandmother died and left Rokeby to him and his two siblings, John Winthrop Aldrich, now 67, who is known as Wint and is the New York State deputy commissioner for historic preservation, and Rosalind Michahelles, 63, a holistic health counselor in Cambridge, Mass.

Image Ania Aldrich, an artist. Credit... Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Unfortunately, their grandmother didn’t leave much money for upkeep, and the lawyers administering her estate told the young Aldriches that Rokeby would have to be sold. Deeply imprinted, as Wint said, by their grandmother’s belief in family stewardship and the historical value of their decrepit inheritance, the three marshaled cash from well-heeled cousins to pay the taxes that first year.

Then the fun began. Ricky Aldrich had spent a few years in Yugoslavia and Poland after Harvard, studying history and practicing what he called “creative capitalism,” but which he said the Polish government considered black market activity. He returned to Rokeby in the early 1970s with a new wife, Ania, a Polish artist who was just 23 and spoke no English.

Now 63, and sporting cobalt-blue eyebrows, she said her first sight of Rokeby was a tangle of woods, since her husband had eschewed the grand, winding, quarter-mile front drive for a back entrance. “I’d come from a small town,” she said. “I wanted to live in a big city, have a big life, a fast life. I said, ‘Oh my God, this is a worse country than where I’m from.’ And then we come to this huge house, and I was very confused.”

The roof leaked, the windows were splintered and there wasn’t much heat to speak of. Also, there was a mother-in-law, Mrs. Aldrich, albeit one who had prudently decided to live elsewhere on the property — in a five-car garage turned dower house. Still, she was kind to Ania, and for the first few years they conversed in schoolroom German.

“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Aldrich repeatedly told her. “I’m so sorry about this house.”

It was sink or swim, Ania said. Wint, his first wife, two daughters and two stepchildren were in residence for a decade or so. Rosalind arrived every summer with her two daughters. Territories and responsibilities were unclear. There were unspoken rules you might trip over.