Landscape Information
In 1958 Stephen and Audrey Currier established a nearly 5000-acre rural estate in the foothills of the Green Mountains, called Smokey House Farm. The property was largely undeveloped forest except for an abandoned marble quarry, a small farmhouse and the remnants of the property’s historic stone walls. In 1959 the Curriers engaged Dan Kiley to create a Modernist landscape wedding the old farmstead with the surrounding streams and woodlands. The residence comprises a series of distinct geometrical spaces terraced into the hillside. A drive winds uphill through a hardwood forest before reaching the house, perched on a summit with views over rolling fields. Kiley lined the drive with sugar maples and enclosed the parking court with low fieldstone walls and a lilac hedge. North of the court he positioned a garage and guesthouse elevated a few feet above grade, with the nearby lawn and trellis accessed via broad, marble steps that bridge a fieldstone wall. An adjacent apple orchard, with twenty trees planted eight feet on center, separates the main and guest houses. Marble steps here descend two feet to the house, crossing a narrow, stream-fed rill. Marble paving wraps around the house, while a building addition extends from the farmhouse and into a sunken garden filled with herbs, ferns, and shrubs. In 1967 the estate passed to the Taconic Foundation and in 1974 opened as the Smokey House Center. Today the residence and thirteen acres are privately owned, while the Center has put 4,417 acres of woods and farmland under conservation easement.
