Four years later, after countless delays and unexpected turns, Charly and I packed our belongings from the rental we’d been living in just 10 minutes from the now livable, but still not finished, Max Hoffman House.
I had been living outside of the city for over three years by that point, and nothing prepared me for the reality of owning a house like this. It was exhilarating and terrifying—a bit like being handed a newborn baby and told, “Here. Take care of it.” And while the excitement was palpable, so were my fears.
Life beyond the city limits was new and foreign, yet standing at the windows, watching the quiet waters of the Sound, the geese, groundhogs, chipmunks, deer, squirrels, hawks, herons, foxes, and coyotes, I knew this was where I was meant to be.
This was the start of my next chapter, but I was not quite ready for the realities of being in an old house, newly equipped with a bevy of modern conveniences—most of which I still don’t understand how to use or what they do. Like with a newborn (I imagine), I was woken up countless times in the first few months to the sounds of alarm bells, water sensors, malfunctioning air-conditioning and heating systems, fire alarms, our confused dogs not knowing which door to exit or enter, and a barrage of hardworking teams, hurrying to finish a project that was fraught with challenges.
Yet through all of it, nothing could take away from my new early mornings with the most beautiful, enigmatic sunrises and a stillness I had never experienced in my life—even if I couldn’t figure out how to open the entry gate, use the iPhone app to control the lights or TV, adjust the room temperatures, or turn the oven on…. I sometimes wonder what Mr. Wright would make of all this new technology in the house, or what he’d think of the very large, fully functioning kitchens. And then I imagine his look of chagrin at what’s been made of the fully finished, slightly over-the-top basement; now a full-time laundromat, infrared spa, part-time pharmacy, hair salon equipped with a barber chair and rinse sink, nail salon (for my current fixation), gift-wrapping station, office supply center, and the room with the only properly proportioned wooden closets in the entire house for a fashion-obsessed couple. While he thought little of people’s comfort or practical living, Wright, I’ve been told, loathed a basement, but as Max Hoffman was a hobbyist, Wright conceded to the construction of a “lower-level,” thankfully for this hobbyist.
