Modern traditional · New build

Cedar Reach

A long, low house on a tidal creek, planned around three fixed points: where the sun rises, where the wind comes from in February, and where the water is at the top of the tide.

Location: Talbot County, Maryland
Completed: Spring 2025
Architect: Marren Bell Architects
Scope: New house, 7,800 sq ft, dock and boathouse

The commission

The site is a peninsula about four feet above mean high water, with a north-west exposure that is glorious in June and punishing in February. Everything about the plan follows from that.

The house is a single room deep for most of its length, so every room has light on two sides and the summer breeze runs straight through. The service rooms are stacked at the north-west end, which puts a solid mass of masonry between the winter wind and everywhere anyone sits.

It reads as three linked pavilions rather than one long house, which keeps the scale domestic from the water and gives the roof somewhere to break.

The living pavilion at Cedar Reach, beams running toward the water — The living pavilionDouglas fir at eleven-foot centres

Panelled joinery in a soft olive-grey paint — The galleryPainted in a lime-based distemper

The fabric

Building four feet above the water

A house this close to a tidal creek is a building-science problem before it is an architectural one. The whole ground floor sits on a ventilated crawl space with a sealed liner, and every penetration through it is detailed and photographed before it is closed.

The cladding is eastern white cedar over a drained and back-vented cavity, with stainless fixings throughout — because galvanised fixings within a half mile of brackish water are a ten-year proposition, not a hundred-year one.

A book-matched marble slab wall with an arched niche — Principal bathBook-matched from a single block

A brick-arched range alcove with flanking counters — The kitchenNorth-west end, against the winter wind

Drawings

We draw everything, including what is already there. On a restoration the measured survey is the project — every later decision refers back to it.

Ground floor plan of Cedar Reach on the lake elevation — PlanCedar Reach

Creek elevation, as built — ElevationCedar Reach

The plan was fixed in an afternoon on the site, in February, in the wind. Everything after that was a matter of building it properly. Marren Bell Architects

Exposed fir roof framing against a bright sky — Framing the living pavilionGrain direction matched down the room

The making

A roof you can read

The living pavilion is framed in Douglas fir on eleven-foot centres, exposed, running toward the water so that the ceiling does the same thing the site does.

Every timber was selected off the stack for grain direction and laid out so the growth rings run the same way down the length of the room. Nobody will ever consciously notice this. Everybody notices the effect of it.

Schedule of materials

Cladding: Eastern white cedar, bevelled, over a drained and back-vented cavity.
Frame: Douglas fir, exposed in the principal rooms, 11 ft centres.
Fixings: Stainless throughout the envelope. No galvanised steel within the cladding.
Roof: Standing-seam terne-coated stainless, 18 in. pans, hand-seamed on site.
Windows: Bronze-clad casements, laminated glazing to the exposed elevations.
Floors: Reclaimed heart pine over a ventilated crawl with a sealed liner.

The house has taken one significant north-westerly since completion. The crawl space stayed dry, which is the only review that matters.

Next project Ashcombe

Federal townhouse · Renovation · Mount Vernon, Baltimore

Enquiries

Every house begins with a long conversation.

We take on a small number of projects each year, and we would rather talk early — before the drawings harden — than late. Tell us where you are and what you are hoping to make.

Begin an enquiry