Grimm’s Fairy Tale

A Classic Woodstock Artist’s Dwelling

by Jennifer Farley and photographs by Deborah Degraffenreid, October 26, 2011

In 1969, after receiving a $2,000 inheritance following the death of his father, young painter Calvin Grimm bought two pitched and scenic acres in Shady, a rural hamlet just west of Woodstock. Grimm had grown up on Long Island, but his maternal grandfather was Woodstock’s town pharmacist; during childhood, he often visited his widowed grandmother.

Grimm missed the muddy historic music festival; as rain was forecast, he needed to roof what has evolved into one of the area’s most tasteful and enduring folk-art houses. “I was in my early 20s, and working with a carpentry crew in Woodstock, having studied art in Buffalo. I knew how hard my father had worked to leave me that money and I wanted the security that my own home would give me,” says Grimm.

Constructed as inexpensively as possible, Grimm’s house was also built sensibly and made to last. When building codes became more stringently enforced, Grimm got the paperwork approved, although he laughs when he says that he’d already “lived in it for years” by the time it was actually certified for occupancy.
Grimm’s home was featured in the best-selling Woodstock Handmade Houses (Random House, 1974), written by Robert Haney and David Ballantine, with photographs by Jonathan Elliott. The book captures the build-it-yourself design ethos of the artists’ colony.

Today, Grimm estimates he has about $60,000 in materials invested in his home. In 1970, he borrowed $500 to buy lumber, but otherwise, he’s paid cash for everything, including an addition built in 1996. Not counting the storage shed, it’s about 1,000 square feet with two bedrooms, two baths, and an office. Grimm recently added a small pool, where he swims in place wearing an anchoring belt. And for the most part, he’s done all the work himself. “The heat is oil-fired hot-water baseboard installed by Kosco over 20 years ago,” says Grimm. “I had previously cut and split all of my own wood” for a stove, he says. “I surrendered from that ordeal.”