The Time You Enjoy Wasting

The split stairway at the side entrance of Sarah Barnett and Chris Brown’s Germantown home presents anyone arriving with a stark choice. Take the stairs to the left, and you find your way straight back into 1863, when the Italianate Victorian sat at the center of the hamlet’s bustling Main Street, surrounded by similarly grand homes built on wealth gleaned from the whaling industry 10 miles to the north in Hudson. 

Take the stairs to the right, however, and you are thrust, immediately, back to a place much more ancient and wild—where the home’s back deck floats like a life raft above a sea of native grass and wildflowers, shaded on one side by an unruly tamarack pine, and the only thing to look at—besides the encroaching wild woods—is the Kaaterskill High Peak in sharp relief across the Hudson. 

Photos by Jonathon Hokklo