Editor’s Note: For the December issue of Vogue, guest editor Marc Jacobs commissioned a single portrait of his own house—a historic Frank Lloyd Wright home outside of New York that he has been painstakingly restoring since 2019. The photographer for this shoot would be none other than Gregory Crewdson, whose highly produced, cinematic images blend realism with a sense of the uncanny. As Jacobs writes in his editor’s letter for the December issue, Crewdson brought a film crew of 40 for the portrait (seen above) and the image “one for the ages, captured me in the perfect moment of vulnerability and overwhelming gratitude.” Below, Jacobs writes about the house he bought in 2019 and what it means to him.
Almost six years ago, I received a phone call from a real estate agent with a particular specialty: unlisted, unique properties.
He didn’t say much, only that he represented a house designed by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright, commissioned by the Austrian American automobile importer Max Hoffman, completed in 1955 and located about an hour from Manhattan. But the house wasn’t for just anyone, as its current owners would only sell to the right buyer.
At that time, I had all but given up on the idea of leaving the city. As a native New Yorker, I found the notion of trading my 56 years of metropolitan life for one outside more a source of stress than serenity. The idea of a second home felt burdensome, another layer of responsibility I wasn’t sure I wanted.
But Wright’s name stirred something in me. And with curiosity outweighing hesitation, I agreed to see it.
As I approached the house, my dearest friend Nick cautioned from the passenger seat to keep any enthusiasm to myself. “Don’t let the seller’s agent see too much excitement,” he advised. I nodded, promising to keep a lid on my emotions—something I’m rarely capable of doing.
That promise crumbled the moment I pulled into the driveway.
I passed through the porte cochere into the motor court, and it was as if the cement and steel of city life cracked open, letting in the first breath of fresh air I’d felt in years. I hadn’t even stepped inside, but I could feel it—this place was different, and genuinely one of the coolest houses I had ever seen. It was this sprawling single-floor layout with massive eaves hanging far over its stone walls. The eaves were interrupted by square cutouts revealing the open, expansive sky (also creating incredible architectural shadows on the ground). I then noticed the decades-old Japanese maple trees—as if perfectly managed and manicured by nature. They were so different than anything I remembered from growing up in the city.
When I crossed the threshold into the foyer, the house embraced me in a way I could have never anticipated. The air was different, still but alive. The stone walls seemed to breathe, blending into the copper, mahogany, and glass. Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision was unmistakable—the architecture and its orientation, every line, every material, every texture—it all had a purpose and a reason for being. The house was living proof of Wright’s hallmark Usonian principle, emphasizing a close connection between a structure and its surrounding environment.
As I moved through the house, I was taken aback by my physical experience and by Wright’s use of proportion and scale. The narrow hallways pressed inward, only to release you into rooms that felt expansive, full of light and possibility. The house felt like it had lungs, inhaling and exhaling you through its history.
Then, I entered the great room.
Floor-to-ceiling windows opened to the south and east, bathing the space in natural light. Outside, the Long Island Sound stretched like a painting—serene, unwavering, majestic. I sank into a chair, as if placed on purpose by the window to lure me in, and the view consumed me. In that moment, the city, the noise, the rush, my daily fears and anxieties all melted away. I felt fully present and completely at ease.
But with that clarity came the understanding that this house would demand so much of me. It was a place that deserved and required care, attention, and patience. I knew I could be happy here, but it would take all my resources, determination, and time to make it mine.
In March of 2019, the deal was done and I became the official caretaker and guardian of this remarkable house. With that came the responsibility of restoring it. The first step was to understand the extent of the decay the house had endured. Immediately noticeable were the sagging eaves, the multitude of leaks from the roof, the dried out, splintered mahogany and the battered exterior woodwork, which had suffered seven decades of winds from the Sound. On April 5, 2019, before the work began, I married my husband, Charly, in front of the magnificent, monumental fireplace, surrounded by 40 of our closest friends and chosen family. Nick (the aforementioned voice from the passenger seat and also known as the voice of reason) officiated the ceremony.
That summer, Charly and I spent most of our time learning the rhythms of life outside the city as we camped in the bare and unrenovated house. We began to understand the enormous challenges ahead, and that the restoration would be slow and extremely painstaking. Living with a minimal amount of unwanted furniture, a half-working air-conditioning system, flickering lights, and no generator for when the inevitable summer storms hit us, we garnered a better scope of what lay ahead. By that fall, the renovations were set to begin in earnest. Soon the house would be meticulously disassembled back to its original studs and foundation, beginning with the replacement of a leak-laden roof and the slow and careful removal of every individual stone in the floor, allowing access to the original mechanical systems that lie beneath. With each passing month, it became clear that the work and craftsmanship necessary was far beyond what anyone had anticipated. Working closely with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, our contractors and architect brought in experts for woodwork restoration and slate-roof replacement (which needed to match the original) and diligently oversaw the jigsaw puzzle that appeared each time a layer of anything was peeled back. I kept my visits to the house infrequent, as it was often overwhelming, particularly with my growing impatience to make this house a home.
However, with each visit, I remembered at our wedding ceremony listening to Nick’s remarks: “The decision to adopt this home into your lives was not made on impulse—it was a thoughtful, considered, and informed commitment that will require constant attention and an incredible amount of patience, love, compassion, effort, and communication. And while this home’s beauty and pedigree is undeniable, just like each of us, it is vulnerable, imperfect, and in need of love and commitment. Its foundation is strong but open to change, growth, and compromise…and how your union under this roof will finally cross fragile lines and usher you into your future together.”
Four years later, after countless delays and unexpected turns, Charly and I packed our belongings from the rental we’d been living in just 10 minutes from the now livable, but still not finished, Max Hoffman House.
I had been living outside of the city for over three years by that point, and nothing prepared me for the reality of owning a house like this. It was exhilarating and terrifying—a bit like being handed a newborn baby and told, “Here. Take care of it.” And while the excitement was palpable, so were my fears.
Life beyond the city limits was new and foreign, yet standing at the windows, watching the quiet waters of the Sound, the geese, groundhogs, chipmunks, deer, squirrels, hawks, herons, foxes, and coyotes, I knew this was where I was meant to be.
This was the start of my next chapter, but I was not quite ready for the realities of being in an old house, newly equipped with a bevy of modern conveniences—most of which I still don’t understand how to use or what they do. Like with a newborn (I imagine), I was woken up countless times in the first few months to the sounds of alarm bells, water sensors, malfunctioning air-conditioning and heating systems, fire alarms, our confused dogs not knowing which door to exit or enter, and a barrage of hardworking teams, hurrying to finish a project that was fraught with challenges.
Yet through all of it, nothing could take away from my new early mornings with the most beautiful, enigmatic sunrises and a stillness I had never experienced in my life—even if I couldn’t figure out how to open the entry gate, use the iPhone app to control the lights or TV, adjust the room temperatures, or turn the oven on…. I sometimes wonder what Mr. Wright would make of all this new technology in the house, or what he’d think of the very large, fully functioning kitchens. And then I imagine his look of chagrin at what’s been made of the fully finished, slightly over-the-top basement; now a full-time laundromat, infrared spa, part-time pharmacy, hair salon equipped with a barber chair and rinse sink, nail salon (for my current fixation), gift-wrapping station, office supply center, and the room with the only properly proportioned wooden closets in the entire house for a fashion-obsessed couple. While he thought little of people’s comfort or practical living, Wright, I’ve been told, loathed a basement, but as Max Hoffman was a hobbyist, Wright conceded to the construction of a “lower-level,” thankfully for this hobbyist.
So, here I am now, at twilight, emerging from my dreamscape of a bedroom where I spent my reading hour in the carefully curated, cozy fishbowl of a study, which is situated down a narrow passageway, only accessible from the primary suite. It’s a Sunday and I’m alone in the house—a delightful rarity. As I make my way to the en suite den and into the compressed hallway, the sun is pushing its last light of the day through the amber-tinted clerestory windows, casting the most beautiful shapes onto the restored mahogany walls. I pass through the small, dollhouse-like library, where I stop to admire my latest collecting obsession, first-edition books, from Cujo to Crime and Punishment, and an ever-growing list of titles past and present.
The pleasant and peaceful stillness amplifies as I step into the great room, where I sink into a chair, placed on purpose in front of the window but this time by me. I daydream about continuing to fill this reimagined interior with art, Arts and Crafts, Deco, Chinese and Japanese art, and Roman antiquities. I’ll wait for the sun to set before I surrender to an hour or two of Netflix….
Though my spirit will always belong to New York City, my heart has found its home in the quiet joy of the suburbs.
In this story: The Great Room, 2024. © Gregory Crewdson. Screen: © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Lamp: © Succession Alberto Giacometti/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY 2024. Director of Photography: Richard Sands. Produced by Juliane Hiam, Alexa Green, and Ellyn Vander Wyden.