A house based on plans by the architect who designed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ home on Martha’s Vineyard is up for sale in Douglas, two years after it was built.
Interior designer Doug Zander listed his three-bed, three-bathroom home for $2.3 million on Aug. 24. Century 21 Realtors Tammy Kerr and Cynthia Beckman have the listing.
The nearly 3,200-square-foot home was completed in 2022 and is based on an updated version of the “1998 Life Magazine Dream House” plans that the late architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen was hired to produce as part of the magazine’s middle-class home design challenge of the 1990s.
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Jacobsen, who was born in Grand Rapids in 1929 and died in 2021, was an internationally acclaimed East Coast-based architect who designed more than 400 homes during his 66-year career. One of them was Kennedy Onassis’ Martha’s Vineyard refuge, Red Gate Farm, that was completed in 1981.
In 2009, Jacobsen and his son, Simon Jacobsen, co-founded Washington, D.C.-based Jacobsen Architecture, an award-winning firm that designs custom projects around the world.
The Dream House remains their only set of stock home plans they’ve made available to the public for purchase.
Zander, who splits his time between Palm Springs, Calif. and Michigan, is parting with the house after just two years in hopes of buying another lot in Douglas to build a similar house.
“This was a fun project, and I’d kind of like to do it again,” he said.
‘Dream’ homes for the middle class
Hugh Newell Jacobsen was one of six top architects that Life hired — one per year between 1994 and 1999 — to produce low-cost home plans that everyday people could buy and build affordably, helping them achieve the “American Dream” on a budget.
The year Jacobsen did the challenge, the brief was to produce plans to sell for $250 each that could be built for $200,000. According to Jacobsen Architecture’s website, Life sold 945 of the Jacobsen-designed plan sets to DIY buyers across North America, Asia and Latin America.
The Dream House Jacobsen devised not only had his signature 45-degree-angle pitched roofs, oversized chimneys and clean lines, but was a “flexible and expandable” H-shaped form inspired by the 1910-era works of British architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944).
“We really thought it was a great design, because it’s so simple, and it can be expanded and shrunk and totally altered in the way that it’s orientated,” Simon Jacobsen said in an interview with Crain’s Grand Rapids Business.
When Life magazine ceased printing in 2007, its investors retained ownership of the home plans. In 2016, the Jacobsens released their own similar designs updated for modern sensibilities and building codes, dubbed the Dream House 2.0. The firm licensed them to Herring Bay Holding Company, and they are available online for $2,300 apiece.
Zander bought one of the 2.0 designs several years ago and worked with the Jacobsens initially to refine the plans for his needs.
Simon Jacobsen said the Dream House was “a labor of love” for him and his father.
“I usually try and get involved with each (Dream House buyer) a little bit just to steer them in the right direction,” he said. “… All of the bits and pieces that you see in the works of my father and myself over the years are inside this Dream House.”
Though he ultimately parted ways with Simon Jacobsen over design differences and hired another draftsperson to complete the plans for his house, Zander said he still loves Jacobsen Architecture’s “simple, subtle” approach to designing homes that feel “one with the Earth.”
“The whole theme of the house is to have it fairly incognito in the front, but then once you get in, it’s kind of all ‘one with nature’ in the back, with lots of windows, lots of plantings and landscaping,” Zander said of the Dream House design.
Simon Jacobsen said somewhere around 2,000 of the Dream House 2.0 plan sets have been sold.
“It has (taken off) simply because of its clean linearity, its spaciousness, and the ability for the owners to be able to modify it with great ease and change the composition of the building and move spaces around without losing the context of the design,” he said.
Perfect for entertaining
Zander said his Douglas home is ideal for entertaining 30 or more guests, with its spacious and open layout with a large kitchen and room for multiple seating areas, plus a huge backyard, patio, hot tub and a bonus garage that could be converted to a guest suite. The yard also has room for a pool to be added.
The kitchen is equipped with Thermador appliances and Ralph Lauren lighting. A large butler’s pantry Zander said was designed to be “a support system for the kitchen” comes with laundry facilities, cabinetry, a pantry, 14 feet of counter space and a second dishwasher.
He added a four-season sun porch that was not part of the original design but that offers additional space for hosting, with eight doors that open onto the patio, as well as a wet bar and fireplace.
The primary suite features a large bedroom, a bathroom with an ample-sized shower and dual sinks, plus a walk-in closet.
Zander said after living in the home for two years, one of his favorite features turned out to be the plentiful natural light.
“It’s a very bright, airy house. A lot of natural light comes into it, but yet, I don’t have a ton of hot sun that comes in, and I think a lot of it has to do with the dormers,” he said.
Another feature he loves is the backyard landscaping.
“This was an empty lot … . It’s a very mature-looking garden for only being two seasons in,” he said.
Kerr, one of the seller’s agents, said the price of $724 per square foot factors in the unusually large lot size — 0.86 acres — for a home in the city of Douglas, combined with comparable sales of other similarly sized homes.
“The architectural design of it obviously stands out,” she said. “There’s nothing like it in (Saugatuck-Douglas).”
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