World famous landscape architect played a role in this Harrison home
A four-bedroom contemporary in the Sterling Ridge section of Harrison that is on the market for $2.495 million, features grounds designed by the landscape architect Armand Benedek in 1970 and then reshaped by another talented landscape designer who bought the property in 2004.
Benedek, who lived in Pound Ridge and died in a scuba diving accident in 2004 while vacationing on Grand Cayman Island, was best known for his collaboration with the landscape architect David Engel on the design of the Japanese Gardens at Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills.
“All of his plans were handed to me when we bought the house, and then I found out he was world renowned,” says garden designer and homeowner Carole Chaimowitz, who lives in the home with her husband, Ron.
“I’m guessing he even had a hand in the placement of the house,” she says. “It’s brilliantly positioned into the cliff, and the light all day keeps this house bright.”
Sterling Ridge is all “cliff, all rock,” she says. “The house is built into the rock -- it’s just married to the cliff. It has such a solid feeling, almost like a tree.”
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The 4,041-square-foot house has four bedrooms, three full bathrooms and one partial bathroom. Two of the bedrooms are currently used as home offices. The house sits on a 1.71-acre lot.
Amenities include a heated and attached two-car garage, a basement gym, a whole-house generator, a large rear patio, a flat lawn, a free-form heated gunite pool with Japanese gardens around it and a 2012 pool house that follows the design of a Japanese tea house.
“It’s a very Zen-like house,” says listing agent Jill Caird, of William Pitt/Julia B Fee Sotheby’s International Realty. “You see different views all of the time. It’s very calming, very relaxing, very quiet.”
“Armand Benedk had a vision and she saw that vision when she looked at the house,” Caird says. “From the house, you have panoramic views of the garden all year round.”
Both the living and dining rooms as well as the primary bedroom suite have floor-to-ceiling walls of glass that face out to the beautifully planted gardens.
“I’m big on the public phase, what you see when you drive by, and the private phase—your paradise, what’s in your back yard,” Chaimowitz says.
“I’m deer fenced in the back,” she adds. “It’s pure salad if they could get in.” And she relies on deer-resistant plants for the front yard.
After closing on the house in 2004, the Chaimowitzes undertook a to-the-studs gut rehab and modernization.
“We did a lot of custom cabinetry,” she says. “All of the woods are custom, chosen for their textures, their personalities.”
“It’s got a nice flow to it,” Chaimowitz adds. “It’s a great entertaining house.”
As part of the plant palette for her yard, she has a collection of Japanese maples as well as viburnums and hydrangeas.
“The whole idea is to have four-season interest, and in addition it’s really important to me, in the depth of winter, to have seed heads and things that hold their own,” she says. “I have trees and shrubs that hold the snow well.”
Sterling Ridge is “beautiful, and walking or biking in this neighborhood is a visual treat,” Chaimowitz says. “That will be hard to leave.”
“This property is magnificent,” she says. After watching the drone footage that’s now on the listing, “I looked at my husband and said we should buy this house.”
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Address: 12 Clinton Lane, Harrison
Price: $2.495 million, with estimated annual taxes of $37,176
Schools: Harrison
Agents: Jill Caird and Connie Sobrino, William Pitt/Julia B Fee Sotheby’s International Realty
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: What $2.5M will get you in Harrison: Contemporary with pool, gardens
