Ridge House

A gabled home that tracks sunrise to sunset from its hilltop perch.

One hundred miles north of Manhattan, an 88-acre hilltop in Columbia County sets the stage for Ridge House, a 128-foot gabled bar that threads between forest and open sky. Worrell Yeung sites the building at the crown of the ridge, so every major space faces a horizon—Catskills to the west, Taconic Mountains to the east. Visitors arrive through a concrete breezeway cut through the center of the plan, where glimpses of both treelines frame the first step inside.

To the south, the layout opens in a single sweep: kitchen, dining, and living gather under a twenty-foot peak, with thirty-foot glass walls pulling the mountains into the room. A concrete island anchors one end; a matching fireplace steadies the other. Sliding doors recess into pockets, letting the great room flow onto a covered veranda so meals, fires, and sunsets share the same stage.

North of the entry, the atmosphere tightens. A long oak-lined hallway runs behind a wall of glass, leading to a series of bedrooms laid out on an eight-foot rhythm. Each room ends on a picture window fitted with a dark-stained vent panel that tilts open without disturbing the square. In the primary bath, a cast-in-place tub sits flush against glass, turning the western ridgeline into the only ornament.

Step outside and a stone-paved trench guides the walk down to the corten-clad Ridge Barn—the companion structure we profiled earlier. Set into the slope like the region’s bank barns, it houses a bunkroom, fitness studio, and storage, while its weathering steel skin echoes the pool’s retaining walls a few steps away.
Both volumes rely on untreated exteriors—corrugated metal for the house, corten for the barn—so the buildings will register the seasons in their own slow patina. Inside, board-formed concrete, white oak, and glass keep the material palette understated, letting the ridgeline remain the main event. In Worrell Yeung’s hands, architecture frames the terrain, then steps back so the Catskills and Taconics can fill in the rest.