Let the Sun Shine

Skylight House

by Anne Pyburn and photographs by Paul Warchol , March 28, 2011

It’s easy to see why, back in the 1970s, an outdoorsman chose this particular location to build a hunting cabin. The approach is a gravel road winding along a Catskills creek through pristine forest. The driveway cuts back up the hill past a large pond, through a swath of lawn and fields still outlined by the stone walls erected by long-ago farmers. At driveway’s end, the Skylight House nestles at the forest’s fringe on the western mountainside, its native fieldstone exterior looking as if it has grown here like one of the trees, its lines classic as a vintage barn.

When a couple from New York City, busy professionals with two children, purchased the rather cramped and dark dwelling that once occupied this lot seeking to repurpose it as a refuge where their family weekends would be blissfully distant from traffic and strife, they turned to architect Marlys Hann to enchant the building into their dream retreat. Hann saw, as they did, the lovely home that could be—and the results speak for themselves.

“At the first meeting,” says Hann, “the owner, who’s quite tall, said, ‘I can’t see out! Can we open this up and get some light and height?’ So the first objective was to create the opposite of the existing warren of small, low-ceilinged rooms with their all-over wood paneled, messy rustic look. The design concepts evolved from the need for spaciousness, light, height, and the expansive, ineffable feeling of connection and flow between inner space and outer landscape.”

The original house was almost completely gutted and rebuilt. What had been a “terribly moldy” garage has been transformed into a comfy and practical entryway and mud room, paneled in butt-joined white-painted board siding, with plenty of room to hose down muddy kids and an adjoining bathroom and laundry. A spacious rec room holds an antique pool table and stone fireplace, its stone surround and hearth gracing one entire wall. Off the rec room, two cozy bedrooms are the children’s domain. Throughout the lower level, polished concrete floors with a white tint maximize the available light and make for easy cleanup.
Up a floating cantilevered staircase surrounded by tempered glass, the 56-by-24 foot main floor has been completely opened up. Massive sliding panels offer the option of either wide open space or separation between the library, with its two walls of built-in bookshelves and sink-into-me furniture, and the living room/kitchen zone with its free-form trestle table and fireplace. Eight-foot-tall sliders line a long wall, equipped with slatted interior shutters that can be closed or opened to admit the precise amount of sunlight and lake view that suits the occupant’s whim. Floors are vintage quarter-sawn white oak. A continuous skylight runs along the peak of the two-story ceiling, over 23 feet above the floor.