Grotta House
The Grotta House has been architecturally integrated into the top of a 6,5-acre flag lot with good views in all directions. It's a 3200 square feet home that was specifically designed to accommodate the Grotta’s and their extensive museum quality collections of mainly mid-century modern craft and design. Its designed is orchestrated based on a thirty-two-inch grid inside and out with large expanses of glass up to 21 feet high in the living room. Its exterior surfaces are comprised of cinder blocks and porcelain enamelled steal panels. Other than some landscaping the house remains the way it was originally built.
Highlights
When Lou’s childhood friend Richard Meier (*1934) agreed to become the Grotta’s house architect, he did so with the understanding that he would have veto power over the choice of its site. After many months of site searching, they found their answer, in the small semi-rural Harding township town of new Vernon New Jersey. Their site is a flag lot whose long straight driveway passes through a populated sheep pasture on its rise to the mainland of the property.
Weeks of bulldozing and back hoeing went in to sculpting most of the crest of the site into six ascending’s grass terraces that blend the lay of the land with the 32-inch architectural grid that defines Meier’s design. It took two years in conception and three in construction before the Grotta’s were rewarded with their certificate of occupancy for their realized dream house with its free-flowing continuous spaces animated by omni present natural light. Meier’s large expanses of glass rising over 21 feet in the living room core create Magritte like scenes looking in from outside and show off mother nature’s greatest show on earth looking out.
The total experience of architecture, nature and art is due to Richard Meier's precise site sighting, their landscapers strategic planting and pruning and the Grotta's major acquisitions. The Grotta’s look out as far as they can see up on open fields some that grow corn and pumpkins and forested spaces populated with powerful picturesque big old trees. When traditionally measured in square floor footage the Grotta House is not a mega house. The true measure of its presence comes out at a distance in its total command over all its land. Over the years the house has appeared in numerous international publications and two Grotta House books.
Check our books section for a book about the house.
Insider's Guide
You can easily combine a visit to the Grotta House with a visit to New York City, as the house is located just 20 miles from the Big Apple.