Manitoga

Manitoga is the home, studio and forest garden of industrial designer Russel Wright, set on seventy-five acres in Garrison, New York, in the Hudson Highlands. Wright bought the land and developed it between 1942 and about 1960, reshaping an abandoned quarry into a pond with a waterfall and laying out woodland paths and garden rooms. His house and studio, known as Dragon Rock, were finished in 1960 and are built into the quarry cliff, stepping down through eleven levels. Granite outcrops form part of the foundation and living spaces, and the south side opens to the pond through large glass walls. Interiors used plaster and plastic embedded with local plants, and furnishings changed with the seasons. The property matters as a personal design experiment showing how a modern American family might live in close relation to nature. It includes a house, a studio, the designed landscape and a non-historic guide house built in 1974. The studio was restored in 2003-04, and the site now operates as a museum and garden.