Jet-setting photographer Douglas Friedman is looking to sell his stunning dream house in Marfa, Texas, for $2.99 million — down from its $3.7 million ask last February.
Dreamy and moody, the West Texas abode sits on 10 acres, and abuts thousands of acres of cattle ranch land.
“After a decade in this extraordinary home, it’s time to explore another idea in West Texas and Eastern Long Island,” Friedman told Gimme Shelter. “This house feels finished, and when a house feels finished, it’s time to move to the next one and begin the process again.”
This month, Friedman’s desert dream house is profiled in a new book, published by Rizzoli.
“Just last week, Architectural Digest and its editor in chief, Amy Astley, released a new coffee table book about the greatest homes to appear in the last decade, and I was thrilled to see my house included in that rarified list.”
Completed in 2017, the three-bedroom, two-bath spread is 2,304 square feet, featuring views of the Davis Mountains to the north and the Haystack Mountains to the east. Interiors — thanks to help from talented design minds like Steven Gambrel, Nicole Hollis and Brigette Romanek — include de Gournay hand-painted wallpaper, Isamu Noguchi lanterns and marble tables.
An art-world destination ever since sculptor Donald Judd left New York for this desert town, Marfa — with a population of 2,000 — attracts artsy types, including actors like Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal, and musicians like Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who reportedly bought a ranch there.
Friedman is known for his work in shelter magazines and has also photographed subjects like Hillary Clinton. This home is just 2 miles from Marfa’s center, which is about a three-hour drive from the nearest airport, in El Paso.
The residence has retractable screens to keep out everything from desert dust to scorpions. In addition, a clerestory window band lets in the light during the day while creating a “glowing ribbon of light” at night.
Inside, the open layout features a chef’s kitchen, a dining area, living spaces, plenty of hidden storage and floor-to-ceiling glass doors that lead to a patio with a fire pit.
Grounds also include a desert palapa — a shade structure — as well as a container lap pool with a hot tub, and local prairie grasses and trees.
“We spent years working to restore the natural grasslands and reduce cattle pasture, and rehabilitating them has been a challenging project, but it’s working, and the grasses are coming back” Friedland said. “I planted about 10 oak trees, along with numerous mesquite and desert sage, and created a grove by the shade structure to attract birds and provide [additional] shade.”
As for the container pool, it “arrived from Canada on a flatbed truck, and we just craned it into a hole we dug. I hooked up the services and was swimming the next day,” Friedman told Architectural Digest.
The serene and inspiring space is about as far from his hometown of New York as one can get.
On Instagram, Friedman has said: “It is a delight to sit out on the patio in the evening around the fire pit and watch the exquisite light show that is sky of west Texas as the last rays of the sun turn to hot pink, to purple and many shades in between as the night falls and the sky fills with the amazing show of the constellations and the Milky Way spilling across the vast night sky.”
The listing broker is Douglas Elliman’s Jeff Burke.