House Beautiful (August 1992)

Guest houses: a host's best friend

Photography Judith Watts

[...]

It was not so much grown-up guests as her own two sons and their pals that made the owner of our second summer house, this one in Dutchess County, New York, build two outbuildings at the same time that she put in the swimming pool. As the boys approached their teens, their mother felt that the old farm house could no longer support boyish capers and adult tranquility at the same time. James Crisp, a New York architect who has a week end house nearby, used beams from two old sheds on the property to fashion these buildings. The pool house, destined as the teens' domain, has a kitchen with soda fountain and a second-floor area with extra-long built-in beds. The owner, a Californian, thought that the small custom spa house would be hers, but the kids like it so much that she has to evict them now and then for a good private soak.

(end of excerpt)