ALL IN A LINE

A CONTEMPORARY HAVEN IN ANNAPOLIS HIGHLIGHTS A LIFETIME OF TREASURES WITH RESTRAINT.

- MARNI ELYSE KATZ

Woodcliff, a stone and nickel gap contemporary with a metal roof designed by Cathy Purple Cherry for a retired energy executive and his wife, sits on a bluff 40 feet above the Severn River, an estuary off the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis. “The name is descriptive, but also references the street that the client’s father grew up on in Richmond, Virginia,” the architect says. Surrounded by tall trees and lush swaths of green lawn complete with Adirondack chairs and a flagpole, it is a picture-perfect, everyday retreat for someone who spent decades traveling the world.

The owners, who relocated from a Texas metropolis, relish the quieter pace of coastal living—Purple Cherry surmises they didn’t landscape the river side of the property so that the husband could putter about on his tractor. They were also keen to pay tribute to their global adventures. “They wanted the house to be a living gallery,” the founder and principal of Purple Cherry Architects says. “It’s designed with clean lines and large walls against which they can display collections from their extensive travels.”

The 6,300-square-foot home stretches nearly 160 feet east to west along the craggy cliff in what Purple Cherry calls a “fantastic long line.” That said, this is no mere lowslung rectangle. The podlike design alternates between three one-story volumes with gable roofs oriented east-west and two doubleheight towers with gable roofs oriented northsouth, with a flat-roofed connector between them. The effect is lyrical and nearly symmetrical, save for a screened porch that juts north toward the water and a three-car garage that pushes south on the flip side.