It’s Setting First, Structures Second at This Coastal Massachusetts Retreat

"When we’re starting a building," starts architect David Duncan Morris, "we’ll find the most amazing place on the property and make sure that’s not where we build. If you occupy the most beautiful spot with the building, then you’ve really done something kind of bad, haven’t you?"

This approach becomes a little more challenging, however, when a property is so remarkable, so abundant with natural beauty, that there are an endless number of sites that could be "the most beautiful." Such was the case with a 72-acre piece of land in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a wild landscape of boulders and woods surrounded by marshy meadows and waterways.

Christopher Crotty and Julia Barry, the owners of this untamed expanse, came to Morris’s design-build firm, Woodhull, in 2019 wanting to create a home that left the land exactly as they found it, as much as they could—a goal that dovetails with the architect’s ethos. "Chris and I had the sense that the way to relate to this land was to develop it as little as possible," recalls Julia.

The prior owners of the property had already equipped it with water and electric, but the project would require several site visits to make any determination about where a structure would go. "The amount of beauty that exists here in every direction is staggering," says Morris. "Oftentimes, especially in waterfront properties, the view is singularly in one direction, and that tells you where you’re going to put a building. But this property was something different because it is surrounded."

The final design plan doesn’t settle for just one vista. It incorporates a main house, as well as a makers workshop—Julia is a ceramicist and counselor, Chris a woodworker and Buddhist teacher—and a cottage that take advantage of several of the views on offer.