Famed Interior Designer's Hudson Valley Retreat Up For Sale

PUTNAM COUNTY, NY — Renowned interior designer Juan Montoya, whose work, and books about that work, are required reading among the cognoscenti, has put his dream home on the market for $5,250,000.

La Formentera is a 110-acre country retreat on a hilltop in the historic Hudson Valley hamlet of Garrison. A woodland paradise designed by the author of "Designing Paradise" (about his tropical projects), it offers total privacy, brilliant design architecture, and sweeping vistas of the fabled Hudson Highlands.

The compound includes a quietly elegant main house, a studio/guest house with a 3-car garage, and a circa 1800s caretakers' cottage with a detached 2 car garage, now the caretaker's residence.

The grounds include a lake, waterfall feeding into a rushing brook, a 60' pool, a stone pool house pavilion with full bath, and an outdoor fireplace.

Montoya named the estate after living on the island of the same name off the Mediterranean coast of Spain. It has been profiled in magazines and is the subject of a book, "La Formentera: The Woodland Refuge of Juan Montoya" — by Karen Lehrman Bloch (Introduction) and photographer Eric Piasecki.

The main house, a Japanese-inspired retreat with a soaring 20' ceiling and a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, sits high above the lake. The wrap-around deck and expansive terrace offer vantage points to take in the inspiring vistas.

The loft-like guest house/studio, which echoes the architecture of the main house with cathedral beamed ceiling, also affords views of the setting from the interior or the observation decks. The property includes a wide variety of indigenous and cultivated floral specimens, stands of mature oak, elm, chestnut, and maple trees, gardens, meandering granite paths and completely restored dry-set stone pasture and retaining walls. Whether taking nature walks, relaxing at the lake, or hosting glamorous parties at the pool complex, there are endless opportunities to enjoy the four seasons and life amid truly peaceful surroundings.

The estate is on a coveted section of the Old Albany Post Road, one of the nation's oldest roads still in use, on the National Historic Register. It is close to the many attractions of Garrison and nearby Cold Spring. It is about an hour's drive from NYC.