I’m told the architects of the Byrdcliffe colony in Woodstock built the first house in 1902 and lived there while working on the other structures dreamed of by founders Jane Byrd McCall and Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead. They, along with artists Bolton Brown and Hervey White, created the utopian living experiment inspired by the English arts-and-crafts movement. Walking through the house with its current inhabitant, Susan Brown, and her stepson, Rennie Cantine, on a sunny and cold winter afternoon brought to life a delightful and romantic account of the many characters who peopled the home during those years.
Don’t try to figure out the bloodlines here. It’s complicated, and the families and folks who’ve provided the life and history that make this particular house come alive are connected by bigger and broader ties. They share art and memory and time. And no doubt about it: love.
A house is the best story there is. Even a new house is full of potential, a tale waiting to be told. It holds the story of an idea — a wish, really — whether born of need, greed or desire.
An old house, though, has more. It’s where people have gathered, had meals and babies, made music, had quarrels and losses and dreams. It offers a deeper kind of narrative, taking longer to tell. The many versions tug at our heartstrings.
A 122-year-old Woodstock house with a storied pedigree checks all the boxes and much more. The Whitehead dream brought an arts colony to Woodstock that spilled over and created first a cluster of separate dreams and then the passionate interlocking community of disagreeable dreamers we cherish today.
Over the decades, this eclectic community came to inhabit not just the farmhouses and cottages of the town but the original habitations of Byrdcliffe itself. The mingling of art, memory, time and love took vibrant and unpredictable new forms.
Susan Brown first came to Woodstock in 1967. She partied, met bartender John Brown at Deanie’s, and connected with his sons Rennie, Peter and Alex, and his daughter Elspeth. Then she left, finished college, and married a law student.
After her starter marriage ended in 1970, she returned to Woodstock and married John Brown. She merged into his life and family and has been here ever since.
The house is mostly original, with an addition ten years in the making which includes a bathroom designed by Rennie. The walls of that bathroom, two feet thick, came from local stone. While it had a toilet, a sink, a tub, and a whole lot of style, it lacked a roof. One could bathe by starlight.
Much of the furniture is original to the house. A beautiful farm table and chairs in the eat-in kitchen show their age in an exquisite way. Rick Danko gave Rennie his first guitar lesson at that table.
An immense butcher block — a wedding gift for Susan and John — is a focal point. All the walls are covered with art. It’s an eclectic collection, with pieces by Fletcher Martin, Richard Segalman, and John and Susan’s daughter Meghan. There’s a piece of sculpture by Steve Heller in a sun-drenched window.
Every room has a story, and often a story within a story. The kitchen — a chicken coop in a former life — is mostly original, and Rennie has a childhood memory of being inside one of its cupboards: quiet and hidden. And the living room, though small, is bright and cozy and one can almost hear the conversations that have taken place.
Looking through the window toward the drive, is the the screened-in porch, made with hand-hewn beams where the kids often slept on a bed that once belonged to Gypsy Rose Lee. John Brown built the wall of bookshelves at the far end of the living room that are overflowing and begging to be perused.
Through the gallery/hall to the bedrooms and bath are more art, more memories. One room is referred to as the Fletcher Martin bedroom.
It feels alive and wondrous to be amidst it all.
Susan is a scholar and has traveled the world lecturing on James Joyce. Her office overflows with photographs and papers and books stuffed with photographs and papers. You can feel the ideas and thoughts, and one yearns to sit and ponder in that space, ask questions and argue the answers.
Onward through the house, and overlooking the woods to the west from the giant bed in the tiny room expanded by daughter Meghan years ago. It feels so complete — as though it had always been there. But wait! There’s the story of how she did it, and what it changed for Susan. The afternoon’s visit — the story of this house as it is known at least for now — offers a happy ending.
The story is bigger than the footprint of the house. It’s grander, too, though it seems contained here. It started long before the family and friends who have wandered through this day’s telling, and it feels as though it could go on and on and on.
Join the family! 
