A pleasant drive of 45 minutes from Manhattan brings you to the Katrina Maxtone-Graham Estate, approximately 25 incredibly private acres abutting parklands and a home you will want to take your time getting to know. A private driveway offers a graceful approach to the estate, revealing a residence that is itself a work of art.
Picture a crisp autumn morning walking the dogs, an afternoon enjoying the grounds and an evening beside one of two fireplaces. There is room here to create, entertain, enjoy the outdoors or simply spend a wonderful day at home. Designed by American artist, ceramicist, sculptor and architect Henry Varnum Poor for Pulitzer Prize winning playwright M
axwell Anderson, the approximately 4,000 square foot main residence has Poor's original ceramic works incorporated throughout, including a remarkable fireplace installation depicting Anderson. You are living with the artist's work in the very spaces he created it for, and that is something special.
Poor's work is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, his monumental frescoes grace Pennsylvania State University and his papers are preserved in the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.
A charming detached guest cottage and a separate estate manager's apartment complement the main residence. If you paint, sculpt, weave or write, there is much here to stir your imagination. If you love art and architecture, you will have plenty to appreciate before you even step outside.
And once you do, the open meadows, wooded grounds and adjoining parklands invite you to linger. A heated in ground swimming pool makes summer days here especially appealing. South Mountain Road has long attracted people with something to create. Its artists' colony included Poor and Anderson, composer Kurt Weill, actress and singer Lotte Lenya, actors John Houseman and Burgess Meredith, textile artist Ruth Reeves and sculptor Hugo Robus.
Anderson and Weill's collaboration gave us "September Song," and Alan Jay Lerner wrote the lyrics for Brigadoon on South Mountain Road. Artists continue to be drawn here today, and spending time at this estate, it is easy to understand the appeal. The longtime home of well known author and conservationist Katrina Maxtone-Graham, the property retains its distinctive and original architecture, integrated artwork and extraordinary natural setting.
A conservation easement makes the land non-developable and not subdividable, protecting the landscape and privacy that make being here such a pleasure. Come walk the grounds, spend some time in the home and see what captures your imagination.
