Hugh Newell Jacobsen's Telluride Compound
Hugh Newell Jacobsen built houses for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Meryl Streep and Rachel "Bunny" Mellon before bringing his pavilion style to 35 acres in Telluride's Gray Head enclave. Working with his son and partner Simon Jacobsen, the architect arranged ten interlocking pavilions of quarried limestone, steel and glass around a circular motor court, each one angled to catch a different slice of Wilson Peak and the San Juan range. The 6,561-square-foot house holds four bedrooms, four and a half baths, a library and a home theater, with floor-to-ceiling glass along the back rooms blurring the line between living space and ridge. Built in 2011 by Telluride contractor John Simon, it sits at the end of a dead-end road with no streetlights for neighbors, backed by Gray Head's own trail network, tennis courts and trout pond. The same restraint that defined Jacobsen's East Coast work now looks out on 16 miles of private trails instead of a garden gate.
