Nice House + Spectacular Site = Questionable Future?

Our visit to the Brown House, in Guilford, Connecticut, was fascinating.

The drive to the house, once we got off I-95, was beautiful, along a quiet road that opened up in several places to overlook a broad salt marsh.


The house itself is nice – just what I like in a modern house: not too big, well-proportioned rooms, good connections between the rooms, a real indoor-outdoor feel, homey and probably comfortable (we loved the window seat in the master bedroom).


The site itself was spectacular. The house is situated on a rocky bluff facing southwest with a view of the bay, the Thimble Islands, and Long Island Sound beyond.


But these last two items are the problem, I think. The house is nice – nicer, in my opinion, than the Alice Ball House. But it’s not spectacular. The site is spectacular.


So for an asking price of $2.9 million, and for $47,000 a year in property taxes, you get a nice house and a spectacular lot. I think the temptation to do what the next door neighbor did – that is, buy a modern house on a similar site, tear it down and replace it with a monstrosity, this one in particular, which you can see from several of the bedrooms – will be too great to resist. I hope I’m wrong. --ta