Our visit to the Brown House, in Guilford, Connecticut, was fascinating.
The drive to the house, once we got off I-95, was beautiful, along a quiet road that opened up in several places to overlook a broad salt marsh.
The house itself is nice – just what I like in a modern house: not too big, well-proportioned rooms, good connections between the rooms, a real indoor-outdoor feel, homey and probably comfortable (we loved the window seat in the master bedroom).
The site itself was spectacular. The house is situated on a rocky bluff facing southwest with a view of the bay, the Thimble Islands, and Long Island Sound beyond.
But these last two items are the problem, I think. The house is nice – nicer, in my opinion, than the Alice Ball House. But it’s not spectacular. The site is spectacular.
So for an asking price of $2.9 million, and for $47,000 a year in property taxes, you get a nice house and a spectacular lot. I think the temptation to do what the next door neighbor did – that is, buy a modern house on a similar site, tear it down and replace it with a monstrosity, this one in particular, which you can see from several of the bedrooms – will be too great to resist. I hope I’m wrong. --ta
3 comments:
Each photo was so beautiful in a wonderful and unique way.This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed looking.
Deirdre G
The house next door may be a monstrosity in size, but it is an architectural gem...designed by Thomas Beeby and the quality of construction is superb, and the use of local granite pays homage to the area. I've seen it inside and out and was thoroughly impressed!
Thanks! Everyone of course is entitled to their own opinion. Personally, I hated it, for its size, for its look, and for the way it dominated a cove where the other houses fit in more modestly. It was the architectural and development equivalent of driving a Hummer down a modest main street.
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