Joe and Anne McCann’s house doesn’t stand out—and that is the point.
Located about 40 miles outside Manhattan, the house is in the stately, gated community of Tuxedo Park in Orange County, N.Y., where enormous Norman-, Tudor- and Georgian-style mansions project from the woods surrounding three glacial lakes. In contrast, the McCanns’ 4,000-square-foot contemporary house, small in comparison, almost melts into the landscape, peeking out from behind layered stone walls that ascend 30 feet high.
"We didn’t want something with people driving by and saying, ‘Hey look at that house.’ We wanted something discreet," says Mr. McCann, 75, a former senior executive at PepsiCo for public affairs.
Joe and Anne McCann at their Tuxedo Park, N.Y., home.
PHOTO: ERICA GANNETT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALThe house, which cost about $1.6 million to build, appears to be carved out of rock walls that match the large natural metamorphic boulders that surround it on the steep hillside. With granite walls and a copper roof, it curves with the topography, with the two lower levels facing the front and the top level twisted to face the boulders.
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Separating the interior of the house from the exterior is a gently curved wall made of glass; stone boulders along the hill frame the other side of the gardens. The walls on the other side of the main level fold in and out as they ascend, creating an origami-like effect. Windows line the top of that wall so that the 18-foot ceiling, held up by thin diagonal cables instead of columns, resembles the inside of an umbrella.
The interiors also reflect the hill’s topography. The main living space narrows as it moves up the hillside from a 30-foot-wide living room to a dining room and kitchen, ending in a 16-foot-wide master bedroom. The rooms are delineated not by walls but instead by grade, with three levels separated by stairs at each level mimicking the three levels of terraced gardens separated by stone walls outside.
The outdoor patio, with its big stone fireplace, sits above the lower level, where there is a library, a cavelike, irregularly octagonal room scooped out of the hillside, and a guest room. A third level, one more story down and containing a family room, is accessible from the outside. The spaces all share an open, pavilion-like feeling, with minimalist modern furniture, rugs and pillows in purples, oranges and reds, lots of steel and concrete with the outside rocks and hillside dominating the environment.
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The house is the first residential project designed by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi of New York based architecture firm Weiss Manfredi. Known for their design of the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the visitor center at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and their current project, the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India, the firm specializes in integrating architecture into the landscape.
The McCanns met Mr. Manfredi in 1983 when he was just starting out; he helped redo a bathroom in their Upper East Side apartment.
In 1984, the McCanns, who don’t have children, bought a small stucco carriage house on three-fourths of an acre as a weekend retreat in Tuxedo Park for $129,000. They called Ms. Weiss and Mr. Manfredi, who are married, to renovate it. The property was such a mess it was dubbed "the Ruins." The couple did a few renovations on the house but focused mostly on the landscaping, planting gardens and installing a fountain and a bridge.
Almost a decade later, the house next door went on sale, and the McCanns bought it for $700,000—in part to prevent someone else from snapping it up. They left it as is for two years, until water issues necessitated a remodel. The couple again called Ms. Weiss and Mr. Manfredi, who had long complained that the house was an eyesore. The McCanns decided to start anew and turn the house into their main home; their first home would become a guesthouse.
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There was no question the new house would draw its inspiration from the landscape, says Mr. McCann. When he was at PepsiCo he oversaw the expansion of the gardens and sculpture park at the company’s Purchase, N.Y., campus. Mrs. McCann, 74, a former children’s clothing and graphic designer who has traveled internationally to study gardens, grew up as the daughter of a modernist architect who designed their home in St. Louis and a stone and glass cabin in the woods.
Getting the plans approved by the community planning board, which works to maintain the spirit of the neighborhood’s original design, took a year and a half. In the end, Mr. McCann says the home passed muster because it was consistent with the character and quality of the homes in Tuxedo Park despite its contemporary twist. "It’s simple but substantial," he says.
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