Design Hunting - Follow the Red Door Through the Trees

In the introduction to his book Country Life, photographer William Abranowicz remembers first visiting upstate New York when he was a child living in Bayonne, New Jersey. Years later, he and his wife, Andrea, started renting upstate themselves. Today, they live in a mountainside house outside Margaretville, a village bordering the Catskill Park; this 700,000-acre swath of land was deeded in 1904 to remain “forever wild” because it is a watershed for the city. Country Life, written by Will’s son Zander based on their notes and conversations, profiles upstate houses and their owners, including the Saugerties home of Jessica Piazza and Tim Unich, excerpted here. It might just make you want to move upstate yourself. After all, as Zander shares, “Whether it’s those brutal winters or the isolation enforced by such rugged topography, upstate living can take on a certain survivalist strain: chopping wood, prepping for blizzards, growing food. In the event of an apocalypse, you could do worse than find your way to Piazza and Unich’s pastoral compound: Just follow the red door through the trees.”

Best,
Wendy Goodman

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