My dream of designing and building a home for my future family goes back as long as I can remember. As a young girl I would approach my two sisters as ‘clients’ and ask them questions such as “How many bedrooms would you like?” and “Are you thinking a hot tub would be nice in your bathroom?” With their criteria in mind, I would then use my favorite 1980’s toy – pipeworks – to build them a house/fort.
Near the beginning of architecture school I was taught that one of the most important aspects of a building design is choosing the site it will sit upon. To achieve a harmonious design, the site and building must evolve in unison. Sadly, site selection is greatly overlooked in today’s home building market. It is not uncommon to see neighborhoods of ‘cookie cutter’ houses – identical buildings lining the streets, with each lot being modified to accommodate the building and not the other way around.
Craig and I were married after my third year of architecture school, and I have to admit that I daydreamed much more about future house ideas than I did about that perfect wedding. Being college students though, we were in no way ready to choose a site. We weren’t even sure what city our future jobs would land us in. We needed to be patient. Eventually we graduated and purchased a small 1900’s farmhouse about 30 miles from Craig’s home town – where we both had secured employment. We lived there for only one year before realizing that the commute was not for us. We transitioned to a historic neighborhood in our city of employment, where we purchased our 1904 Foursquare. It was there we became parents and began growing our family. After our second son was born our thoughts once again turned toward site selection.
In our minds eye, our perfect site included plenty of mature trees – woods that our boys could play in. We also knew that we did not want to build a large home and though the site didn’t have to be very large, acreage would be a bonus if we could afford it. We scoured online listings and drove around to the prospects, creating a list of pros and cons for each. One Fall day as we were driving, we stumbled upon a nearly hidden property. From the street it didn’t look like much, but we decided to park and check it out anyway. I will never forget the emotions of the moment when we stepped out of our vehicle and onto the site. There were mature oak and maple trees as far as we could see, their dried leaves slowly falling to the ground with a breeze from the crisp air. The land sloped fairly steeply toward a large pond. It felt like magic. It felt like home.
The next few days were a whirlwind of working through logistics. Could we really afford this? How far of a drive is this property from the fire station (per department rules, we need to live within an 8 minute drive from the station). What were the building restrictions for the site? What were the specifics on the lot size? (we later found out that the site was larger than we first expected, 4 1/2 acres total: 2 acres of pond and 2 1/2 of land) As it turns out, all the details fell into place. We purchased our little slice of the universe at the very end of 2009.
These are pictures from our first family outing on the property. You can see from these photos how much the land slopes toward the pond.
This was just one of many exciting and happy memories we hope to make there. We are looking at this as our forever home, a lifetime property where Craig and I want to grow old together. We have told our kids that we wish to keep the house and land in our family for generations to come; and thought that naming the property would be the perfect way to add some significance and permanence. We all sat down and brainstormed name ideas, taking cues from the land, and eventually decided on ‘Arrow Hill.’
As you can see from this image, the site is a pie/ arrow shape, with the ‘point’ facing North; And, as I have already mentioned, it is mostly a hill. If you look at the elevation markers you will see that it slopes from 1395.5 at the top/ road level down to 1370 at pond level. That’s a 25 1/2 foot drop over approximately 104 feet, for a slope of 14 degrees (25 %)! Note: The contour lines that have dash marks indicate ‘wetlands’ /non buildable land.
One additional unique aspect of this lot is that it has many bordering neighbors: 6 across the pond, 1 to the south, and 7 to the west. Amazingly, it still feels remarkably secluded thanks in part to the woods and the topography.
We are so happy to have found our perfect site and can’t wait to build our little cottage on it!
