Out of the Box

A Cape Cod artist dares to be different designing—and building—her own stylish, sustainable home that she describes as “a Manhattan loft floating over a meadow.”

Morgan’s one-of-a-kind house is a masterpiece that’s hard to miss. Photo by Stacey Hedman

The words were written in ballpoint pen on a scrap of printer paper and duct-taped to a tree in front of artist Jennifer Morgan’s new house in East Harwich: “This is a disgrace.”

Not exactly the warm, neighborly welcome Morgan was used to from her lifelong visits to Cape Cod. She could have been upset over it or worse, bitter. But that’s not Morgan’s style.

“I taped the sign to the window of my truck and drove around with it for a while,” Morgan laughs while recounting just one of many challenges she encountered in the process of designing and building her own house.

Cape Cod has a rich and storied architectural legacy of which its residents are fiercely proud. Perhaps the writer of the note simply didn’t know what to do when faced with something new, unusual, and wonderfully un-Cape Cod.

Morgan knew from the beginning what she loved and what she wanted. As a painter, she has an appreciation for color, design, and function and is not afraid to be different. She chose a piece of property that many others had passed over, unfazed by a steep hill that was probably regarded as unbuildable. Trading in cedar shingles for galvanized steel and concrete for wide pine floors, she created a special haven that is equal doses sustainability, simplicity, and style.