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Building Big Barry Eldridge had had enough of cramped spaces, so he told his designer and contractor to build, and build big. They did.
It was a life filled with restrictions. "You couldn’t paint without approval," he said. "You couldn’t put a satellite dish outside." The kitchen was so small that Eldridge couldn’t have as many as one other person working in it at the same time. "The whole place was that way," he recalled. "If you turned around, you’d bump into something." Oh, and Eldridge liked animals. He owns four Great Danes. So, when the time came to build his own house, Eldridge’s imperatives were space – lots and lots of space – and, perhaps more important, a feeling of space. Depending on its design, even a large house can feel claustrophobic. Eldridge turned the problem over to Wayne South, the regional dealer for Lindal Cedar Homes, a Seattle-based company known for post-and-beam construction. It was no more complicated, said Eldridge, than stopping into the Lindal showroom in Hope, N.J., and liking what he saw. "Cedar has a natural look," he said. "It weathers very well and is just gorgeous." (It should be: Eldridge and his son sanded and stained the big beams in his house themselves. Doing so cut costs, he said, and left him with the sense that he "built" the house himself.) What South came up with is essentially a string of rooms arranged on an east-west axis. The rooms are large, but what’s most important is that – because of their linear arrangement – each room has two window walls – one facing north, the other south. "Barry wanted it light and bright in every room, with no dark spots," said South. "The house gives you the feeling that you’re living outside." Each room on the first floor has a vaulted ceiling; ceilings in second-floor rooms range from 10 to 12 feet.
So, for Eldridge’s adult-oriented lifestyle, the spread-out floor plan works. The center of the house is dominated by a 32-by-28-foot living room with an adjacent kitchen. On one side of this central cluster is the master suite; on the other, the guest rooms. In December, the living room was the gathering place for Eldridge and his business partners who huddled through a weekend to consider the acquisition of a Colorado insurance agency. The house easily accommodated five guests in discrete areas that offered privacy to each guest – privacy not only from Eldridge, but also from each other. "Barry does a lot of entertaining," said South. "A lot of his guests come from all over the country and they stay for a period of time. He wanted the guest areas to feel like a part of the home, but also to have a separate identity." According to South, the structure is probably slightly less energy efficient than it would be with less glass. On the other hand, he said, Lindal wraps each of its houses with a six-millimeter layer of plastic on the inside of the studs for a tight seal. (That’s in addition to traditional Tyvek on the outside of the sheathing.) Even the concrete basement was sheathed with the vapor barrier before it was finished. "It creates a very tight structure," he said. "It’s very efficient." Eldridge likes simplicity. So, he gravitated to modern design with its implied lack of clutter. There is no frou-frou here. For the kitchen, he chose brushed-steel appliances, plus unornamented European-style cabinets. The living room is furnished with a large sectional sofa, a grand piano, a coffee table, two accent tables and two serious-looking telescopes that Eldridge uses to study his domain. And that’s it. Nothing in the room is as impressive as the view or the massive stone fireplace. Wine drinkers, however, might be impressed with the basement wine cellar which, though it has rack space to accommodate 6,200 bottles, currently houses only 1,400. "I like to drink wine," said Eldridge, "so it might take a while to fill it." Separate from the house is a 7,600-square-foot barn housing the classic cars Eldridge promised to buy himself. The fleet includes a 1930 Ford roadster with a rumble seat and a 1923 Ford T-bucket (an early pickup), plus reproduction of a 1922 T-bucket. To go to Parsippany, though, Eldridge drives a hum-drum Mercedes. Eldridge considered putting in a swimming pool but, after studying up on maintenance issues, settled for a "koi" pond that, in reality, is stocked with bass, blue gill and catfish.
Eldridge discovered the property in the mid-1990s when he was squeezed into his townhouse. The seller wanted $425,000, but made the mistake of letting Eldridge – who learned to dicker from pros – know that he wanted to sell quickly. He bought all 30 acres for $135,000. (Eldridge likes to cut deals. A favorite story concerns the $1,500 couch that he took home for $600 by telling the salesman, "Let me talk to the manager.") Then, he bought a bulldozer and spent two years massaging the land. "You couldn’t tell what it was at first," said Eldridge. "The land was rolling and covered with scrub trees 5-8 inches in diameter." It had been used for hunting, but the sole improvement was a narrow, winding dirt road carved out by generations of farmers. Pushing down the trees allowed Eldridge to get a full view of the terrain and identify the high spot which would be his house site. "I can see New York state from there," he said, "and the views are gorgeous." Despite the long views, though, Eldridge can see the house of only one neighbor, and only when the leaves are down. "I’m really out in the middle of nowhere and that’s how I like it," he said. The closest town is Hope (pop. 1,500), an old village of stone buildings, cute shopping and B&Bs. But, according to Eldridge, the small local post office didn’t have an extra post office box, so he took a Blairstown address instead. The size of the house brought attention. In little Hope, the word was that actor Harrison Ford – who sometimes uses the Blairstown airport – was moving into the big new place on Delaware Road. "I didn’t realize how big it was until they dug the basement," said Eldridge, who nevertheless did not tell the workers to stop. Design New Jersey June-July 2006
 Mark
E. Dixon
757 Upper Gulph Road
Wayne, PA 19087-2022
USA
610-971-0649
mark.dixon@att.net
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Context
is everything. So, appreciating Barry Eldridge’s 12,000-square-foot,
contemporary house – which sits on 30 acres near Blairstown – starts with
knowing that the 6-foot, 2-inch, 235-pound insurance broker previously lived in
a 1,500-square-foot townhouse in a gated community.
Eldridge
is divorced and his children are grown, so traditional family concerns –
proximity to children’s bedrooms and child safety, for example – were not a
concern. (Open stairways? No problem. Place fragile art objects on low tables?
Sure.) On the other hand, Eldridge needed a complete home office for snow days,
or when he just doesn’t feel like making the 32-mile trip to his main office
in Parsippany.
The
satellite dish is out of sight on the roof. It turned out that Eldridge didn’t
like looking at it anymore than his old homeowners’ association.