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A Writer's Residence
Fairfax & Sammons restores a 1920s cottage above he Hudson River in New York.
Text by Mary Miers | Photos by Durston Saylor
Story Excerpted from American Houses the Architecture of Fairfax & Sammons
Fairfax & Sammons restored a 1920s cottage for Arthur and Linda Collins.
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Such is the rustic charm of this weekend getaway that it might be mistaken for an old farmhouse far from the city. But it is, in fact, just 35 miles from Broadway and was built as a simple weekend cottage in the 1920s. The house stands perched on the edge of that dramatic wooded scarp known as Palisades, which overlooks the Hudson River from the west.
The present owners are Arthur Collins, a retired professor of philosophy, and his wife, Linda, a fiction writer who grew up in the neighboring town. They asked architectural firm Fairfax & Sammons to enlarge Sneden's Landing in a sympathetic manner to create a comfortable weekend escape from the city and a place where they could work in peace.
The building is of a smaller scale and more modest than many of the firms' other projects, but it gave Richard Sammons the opportunity to indulge his interest in vernacular buildings that have the ring of traditional craftsmanship, in sympathy with the owners' own tastes. The Arts and Crafts spirit of the place is expressed in the bare "flag wall" masonry, the picturesque grouping of ranges of differing heights, the asymmetrical fenestration and prominent chimney stacks, and the carved front door, which is set into a round-arched opening beneath an elongated eyebrow canopy.
Whitewashed walls and antique furnishings are reminiscent of the English Arts and Crafts style made popular by WIlliam Morris in the late 1800s.
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The house is entered through a gabled central block that runs back to the steeply terraced riverfront, where its walls rise from the "living" rock. To the right of the entrance stair hall is a barnlike range containing, on the ground floor, the living room, and in the roof space above, Linda's writing studio, which was created out of several rooms. The interiors—simply but stylishly furnished with exposed ceiling joists and limewashed walls throughout—hint at a bohemian artist's retreat. In the upstairs studio, bare wooden floors are accented with dazzling red and blue rugs woven by Marsh Arabs in Iraq. The long whitewashed living room has a large unadorned fireplace at one end; an inscription, which translates from Latin as "frequent friends are the ornament of the house," is carved into the beam above. The room is sparely decorated, with contemporary paintings by friends and relatives (including the owners' son, Jacob Collins, a well-known artist), pieces of well-crafted wooden furniture, and rugs laid over bare brick floors. The brick flows out uninterrupted to merge with the paving of the riverside terrace, creating a strong visual link between the inner and outer spaces.
The central range was heightened to accommodate a master bedroom suite on the upper floor, with a balcony overlooking the Hudson. The open roof structure includes the features of a large oculus in the apex of the gable, which faces east toward the river to catch the morning sun. The dining room below, with old oak furniture from England, continues the rustic theme, with a projecting chimney breast of whitewashed stepped bricks and a low beam ceiling. To the north is a lower extension, with a beautiful river view. This contains the kitchen and a breakfast/sitting room and study, separated by a tall Spanish Baroque timber screen. The screen was a feature of the original house, and its height dictated the ceiling level in these rooms.
In the garden, which slopes down from the road to the terraced cliff edge on which the house is sited, the architects have had fun with a former goat shed. They have converted it into a guest annex—a quaint, half-timbered eye-catcher in an English Arts and Crafts style, with a pretty oculus and louvered fleche. With the help of two gardeners, Linda Collins has cultivated one acre of the garden with English-style borders filled with tulips, irises, and other plants as colorful as the neighbors' peacocks, leaving the other acre as a natural woodland setting for the house and garden.
Mary Miers is a writer, architectural historian, and historic buildings conservationist. She is currently the architectural writer at "Country Life," a British magazine founded in 1897.
American Houses was published by Rizzoli of New York in 2006.
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