John Kahn went into the woods with a sauna and came out with a five-level house. That’s the abbreviated version of a 15-year project whose every curve, railing, door handle, and unexpected material bears the mark of an artist who has never been especially interested in doing things the usual way. On September 26 and 27, the public will be able to walk through the Tower House in Saugerties during a ribbon-cutting weekend that pairs tours of the building with music and a conversation with its maker.
For Kahn, the opening still requires some explanation. “What would you want to do that for?” he remembers thinking when the house’s current owner, Jim Beer, told him he wanted to share it with visitors. Kahn had spent years making the place, but he had never lived in it. Beer saw something else: an architectural experience too absorbing to keep to himself.
The project began while Kahn was working at the Schoolhouse, the historic Saugerties building where he and Jim Henson developed a studio. Kahn ran a crew of 15 there, and the place was alive with work. He found a wooded property on Fishcreek Road, put his sauna on it, and started wandering the land while it warmed up.
“I saw this round and I started just building what was gonna be a little cabin, and it just grew and grew,” Kahn says. He drew up blueprints, but each stage of construction presented another possibility. His fascination with building in the round became the defining challenge: The Tower House has continuously curved walls, not a series of flat surfaces arranged to look circular.
Over 15 years, the cabin became a five-level structure assembled from stone, timber, slate, copper, and reclaimed materials. Kahn drew on the skills he had accumulated as a sculptor, woodworker, draftsman, set designer, and performer. A problem with one material led him to try another; a structural solution suggested a new visual idea. The house developed through the same curiosity that has driven his oversized sculptures and theatrical projects.
Kahn had studied wood bending and developed an interest in Japanese joinery. Those skills appear throughout the Tower House, along with the mechanics and showmanship of a former circus performer. “There’s circus in the house,” he says. “There’s architecture. There’s super fine furniture and detailing.” All those pursuits, he suggests, travel with him in “one little valise” that he opens when he needs it.
Kahn’s work has a way of refusing sensible limits. In a 2023 Chronogram profile, he described growing up as a collector of objects whose forms or construction fascinated him. As a college student, he made a seven-foot wooden eggbeater and an 11-foot flying machine inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. He later designed sets for Henson’s “Fraggle Rock” TV show and made sculptures large enough to demand a truck-driving crew. At the Tower House, his ideas became an environment people could move through.
And yet Kahn speaks of the building with the offhandedness of someone already occupied by several other projects. “It was just a little project going on,” he says. He calls himself a wanderer and says he has spent much of his life working in isolation. When he left for Easter Island about 25 years ago, he had too much on his plate to maintain the property. He sold the house to Rhoney Stanley, who later sold it to Beer.
Beer wasn’t planning to settle in the Hudson Valley. He saw the house and moved in in February 2022. “Honestly, the house itself got me here,” he says. “The house completely charmed me, and I knew from the beginning, this has to be shared. It’s not for Jim alone.”
That conviction did not immediately turn into a public program. Beer first tried to establish a simpler domestic life in the building, then found that living there privately didn’t satisfy his desire to show it to others. He now occupies one small room; much of the rest of the house is given over to the experience of the building itself. Kahn, who returns to Saugerties from Easter Island, has helped with interior touch-ups and the preparations for this month’s event. Their collaboration has become a friendship. Kahn says they have “literally become brothers.”
Beer is still discovering what it takes to care for the property. He recalls arriving with a leaf blower and a weed whacker, assuming that would cover the job. The house and grounds had other ideas. Living there has been “one of the greatest adventures of my life,” he says—an experience that continues to surprise him four and a half years in. He hesitates over the word “steward,” but he is certain about his mission: to let people encounter the house and find the same delight he did.
For the opening weekend, visitors will move through the Tower House in small groups of approximately 10, seeing its five levels and the handmade details that reward close attention. The grounds offer ponds, sculptures, and hidden moai. Sefra Alexandra, whose partner is Kahn’s son Jasper, says she notices something new each time she visits. Walking inside, she says, feels like entering a sculpture.
Saugerties has a remarkable appetite for buildings that seem to have escaped their blueprints. Opus 40, Harvey Fite’s sprawling bluestone sculpture, and Tom Gottsleben’s Spiral House are nearby companions to Kahn’s handmade world. Kahn says Gottsleben visited while the Tower House was under construction and later asked to measure it before building his own round house. Together, the three places suggest a local tradition of artists taking an idea into the landscape and seeing just how far it can go.
The weekend also introduces the Tower House Sanctuary as a setting for performances. Pianist Katya Grineva, a friend of Kahn and Beer, will play outdoors at 1:30 and 3:30pm each day, with a grand piano set beneath the trees. Her selections will include works by Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt—music she hopes will mingle with the sounds of the property. Between performances, Kahn will speak with visitors about the house’s construction and answer their questions.
The $75 admission includes the tour and concerts. Tickets benefit Grineva’s Katya Concerts for Kids Foundation, which brings children and families to her Carnegie Hall holiday performances. The September 26 and 27 programs are identical, giving more people a chance to visit while limiting the size of each day’s gathering. Beer and his collaborators plan to develop additional events, though nothing beyond the opening weekend has been scheduled yet.
Kahn will be there to explain how he made the building. He may be less inclined to explain what it means. He says he never stopped long enough to consider that while building it: One project led to another, as it always has for him. Beer has supplied an answer of his own by opening the doors. For two afternoons, visitors can follow the curves of Kahn’s long-running “little project” and decide what they find inside.
The Tower House Sanctuary ribbon-cutting weekend takes place September 26 and 27, 1–5pm, at 107 Fishcreek Road in Saugerties. Admission is $75, including house tours and performances by Katya Grineva at 1:30 and 3:30pm each day. Tickets and information.
