Cantitoe Corners: Martha's Farm in Bedford

Martha Stewart’s move to Bedford, New York, an upscale hamlet in Westchester County, took place over a period of several years while her new property underwent major renovations. She purchased two contiguous lots (totaling 153-acres) in 2000 and, since then, has been gradually restoring and rebuilding, making new additions and refurbishing existing structures. Once called Sycamore Farms, Martha’s property was first settled in 1784 and is known locally, today, as Cantitoe Corners. (Cantitoe was the wife of an Indian chief named Katonah who lived in the region in the 1700s.) Its previous owner, Ruth Sharpe, was an eccentric millionaire who died in 1999 at the age of 95. When her family decided to sell the property, Martha knew it was where she wanted to be.

Martha’s new home is more like a small village, with a series of houses and out-buildings dotting the expansive grounds: perfect for her plans to create what she calls "a new kind of farm". Martha resides in the 1925 farm house (the Winter House), shown above – a three-story abode fronted by a long porch and dormer windows on the third level. Adjacent to the farm house is the property's original structure: a 1770 Colonial house, known as the Summer House, which is where Ms. Sharpe lived. There is also a nearby tenant’s cottage, where her daughter, Alexis, lives with her children when she is visiting. The property also contains a guest house, known as the Maple Avenue House, and a contemporary house deeper on the property. You will see photos of these below. (All photos are from TheMarthaBlog.com.)

With expansive fields and swaying sycamore trees, the property is one of the finest in the region, adjacent to the home of fashion designer Ralph Lauren. Westchester County was once famous for its Republicanism and old money. Today, however, the attitude here is decidedly casual and laid back, home to a roster of celebrities, including Richard Gere, Ryan Reynolds and wife Blake Lively, and Glenn Close. Traditional roots are still intact, however. The 1939 clock tower at Sutton Corners, for instance, is wound by hand each week by the neighbors. Many of the wealthy landowners are farmers, too, tending to their land and livestock in dirty dungarees. Old money still lives on, though: Francis Kellogg still lives in his family’s 18th Century house at Mill Pond, and Robert F. Kennedy lives there with his family, tending to the region’s pollution control and water sanitation regulations.

Martha, who adores new projects, snapped up Cantitoe Farm when it went up for sale and she immediately wrote a mission statement for the property, a manifesto of dreams, as it were, outlining all of her desires and plans for what she hopes will be her main residence from now on.

Borrowing design and homestead philosophies from the Shaker communities in New York and Maine, Martha envisioned a farm of unparalleled practicality and style. “I want to have a new kind of house, a smart house,” she told Vanity Fair in 2005. “This is going to be the future. That’s what I’m trying to do here.”

Memrie Lewis, a long-time friend of Martha’s, elaborated on Martha’s dreams in the same Vanity Fair feature. “She’s creating a magical place,” says Memrie. “Her concept is that it’s going to be a self-sufficient American farm. You never have to leave your land. She tried to do that at Turkey Hill, but it was just too small. This is the dream she’s had for a long time: to have everything you need to eat or drink – vegetables, milk, eggs, fruit, everything you can think of – right there in those acres.”

Martha is already quite close to achieving this dream.

In 2001 she hired famed architect Allan Greenberg to co-design many of the new building plans, including new garages, stables, greenhouses and barns, as well as converting a tractor garage into an entertaining room off the kitchen, which are both joined to the main house by a walk-through servery. Martha constructed a large garage and converted an old barn into a building for special projects: it contains a blogging room and a homekeeping studio on the main floor and a gym on the second floor.

What never came to fruition, however, was a 4,500 square foot house in the center of the adjacent farm field. Preliminary sketches showed a two-story structure with banks of small-pane windows, similar in style to Shaker architecture, at the end of a long pathway surrounded by wildflowers and hostas. According to an article in the New York Times about the property, Allan Greenberg says Martha envisioned three enormous rooms inside this building (each approximately 30' x 50') for entertaining large groups. The plans, however, were never carried out.

The houses that were already on the lot at the time of purchase have been completely rebuilt on their existing foundations. Martha reconfigured the layout of the Winter House to face backwards, so that its front porch looked out over the acreage rather than the road. The exteriors of the houses were done with hand-cut clapboard siding, stained gray. In fact, the entire palette of the property is gray – Bedford Gray, which became a popular paint color sold through her Martha Stewart Living paint line at the Home Depot. The color was based on an old piece of Italian stationery that Martha had in her collection. Gray stone stables, gray fencing, gray equipment buildings and gray barns dot the landscape.

The interiors have also been re-worked using shades of gray. The main kitchen in the Winter House is comprised of dyed-gray sycamore veneer cabinetry with gray lacquer trim. The cabinets and shelving were designed by architect Beth Weinstein and built by Bjork Carle Woodworking in Brooklyn. The white and gray floor was cut from stone taken from the Gordon Bunshaft house Martha once owned on Long Island. The overall effect is of serenity and monochromatic harmony. To see the interiors of the Winter House, click here.

Outdoors, she has had four miles of carriage roadways built on the property and she imported 100-year-old white cedar paddock fencing from Canada to create grazing paddocks for her five Friesen horses, also from Canada: a farm called Witteveen. Courtyards on the property are paved with cobblestones that once lined the streets of Elizabeth, New Jersey (Martha's home state) and were originally used as ballast on old wooden cargo ships.
There are more than 45,000 daffodil bulbs planted along the rock walls that line the property (45 different varieties) and thousands of new trees have been planted since her arrival, including lilac, pin-oak and linden allées. Japanese maple groves and a pinetum were also planted. There is a peony garden boasting 200 different plants and a 'boxwood room' next to the Summer House. 

In spring 2007, the host of Animal Planet's Backyard Habitat, Dave Mizejewski, designated Martha's Bedford property as a Certified Wildlife Habitat with the National Wildlife Federation. Martha encourages birds, owls and bats on the property by setting up bird houses in the woods. Enjoy the photographs of Martha's farm, below:

Martha in the stables with her horses and donkeys, all from Canada. The stables were designed and built by Allan Greenberg's firm with interiors designed and built by a British company called Loddon.

Martha's Friesen horses grazing outdoors. To keep their coats shiny and black, Martha rarely lets them out during the height of sunny summer days, since sunlight can turn their coats a reddish hue. Early mornings and evenings are the times you'll most likely see the horses outside.

The entrance to the stables. 

The stone used to build the stables was quarried in Vermont.

The greenhouse where Martha keeps her collection of tropical plants was designed and built by Allan Greenberg's firm, based on the designs of Crystal Palace, a large cast-iron and plate-glass Victorian greenhouse built in Hyde Park, London.

Martha inside the greenhouse.

Behind the greenhouse is the enormous vegetable garden. Today, the garden has been converted to Martha's cutting garden and the vegetable garden has moved closer to the chicken coops.

Martha displays her tropical plants during the summer months in the sunken garden, which connects the main Winter House to the Summer House.

The entrance to the Summer House.

The tenant cottage in the spring.

The contemporary house on the property. It is the only building that Martha has not yet renovated.

The formal parterre, leading up to the porch of the Winter House.

A History of Turkey Hill

To any fan of Martha Stewart, the name "Turkey Hill" triggers instant recognition: damask setees on orange pine floors, gilded Federal style mirrors above a profusion of artfully arranged hydrangeas in crystal vases, warm, sunlit rooms that look over an expansive plot of happily-sown land.

Turkey Hill was Martha's home between 1972 and 2003. More than this, it was the primary laboratory and idea-factory for her business and the muse for her creative and domestic vision.

Few other homes in history have played such a significant role in the formation and development of a business.

The Federal style home became a sort of "Graceland" to Martha's reading and viewing public over the years and functioned as the inspiration for many of Martha's books, magazines, television shows and products.

The home sold to new owners for just over $4-million.

Martha announced her departure from Westport in 2000 on somewhat bitter terms, leaving Turkey Hill unoccupied until her mother, Martha Kostyra, moved in a few years later.

In a letter she wrote to the New York Times in 2000, Martha described how Westport had lost a lot of its charm and friendliness and noted that ongoing feuds with neighbors were getting her down.

She wrote: "I've thought long and hard about the many changes in my life that have now forced me to seek home and comfort elsewhere. And I've concluded that they're not so odd, not so radical, not so personal – but certainly they are powerful enough to make me feel that I must leave, that I must go."

At around the time the letter was written, Martha purchased a 153-acre farm estate in Katonah, New York, in the quaint and affluent community of Bedford, just north of New York City. The home, known locally as Cantitoe Corners, would become Martha's next renovation project and featured a 1925 farmhouse, a 1770 Colonial house, an 1897 tenant's cottage and several other buildings – all of which were consigned for Martha's special brand of renewal and regeneration.
Martha in the kitchen she designed and built with her husband, Andy Stewart, in 1980. You can view the kitchen after its 1990s renovation below.

Martha comes by this need to restore and beautify honestly. Ever since she first moved into Turkey Hill in 1972 with her then-husband, Andy Stewart, and their daughter, Alexis, its beautification was her singular aim.

The couple paid only $81,000 for the house, which was in sad disrepair and a state of decay when they bought it.

Built in 1805 by Captain Thorpe, an onion farmer and barge owner of some repute, the house sits on the highest hill in the Greens Farms neighborhood with spectacular views to the south. One can see Long Island Sound on a clear day. As part of Connecticut's 'Gold Coast' the area has become one of the most prestigious in the country, home to numerous celebrities, writers, artists and business moguls.

But when Andy and Martha first glimpsed the property it was in shambles after 167 years of various owners and tenants. It had been rented for 50 years by the previous owners and very little had been done to preserve its historical integrity. Martha's sister Kathy describes going to visit Martha and Andy during the first few weeks after they had moved in: "We were going into this house thinking, 'My God, how are two people and a baby living in this chaos?' It was just a wreck of a house."

There was no central heating, just a mish-mash collection of ruinous fireplaces scattered throughout the house. Faulty electricity and primitive plumbing (stone-filled, hand-dug wells) and two acres of overgrown and weedy land were just some of the obstacles that faced the Stewart homesteaders as they embarked on their restoration project.

While various things had been added on to the house by the previous owners very little had been taken away, giving Martha a nearly clean slate upon which to plan the home's refurbishment; its bones were still intact.

Martha and Andy spent countless hours, both indoors and out, scrubbing away the years of neglect. They replaced it with a personal and visionary style that would later come to embody Martha's visual underpinnings and design trademarks.
Among her additions was a room at the back of the house (shown above) and a porch at the side, overlooking a new pool she installed and painted black to give it the look of a natural pond. She hired her brother George to convert the barn on the property into a party room for entertaining and to build a second edifice on the lot behind the house for a large industrial kitchen (for Martha's catering gigs) and guest rooms above.
New gardens on the property included a luxuriant vegetable plot, several orchards (peaches, apples, pears and plums), a cutting garden, a formal herb garden and a shade garden. She resurrected the old chicken coop for her Araucana hens and rechristened it Le Palais des Poulets (Palace of the Chickens.) Martha and Andy later purchased an additional two acres adjacent to their property and doubled the size of the lot, bringing the total plot to four acres. The yard played host to numerous weddings and garden parties in the summer, while the home and its outbuildings became cozy places of refuge for an unending cycle of guests and visitors during the cold holiday season.

As Martha's catering business became ever-more successful, she decided to write a book about one of her favorite topics: Entertaining. Using Turkey Hill as the backdrop, she filled the large, hardcover book with sumptuous photographs of food and settings that she and her staff had created. It would go on to become a bestseller and Martha began to use Turkey Hill and its captivating evolutions as tailwind for her ever expanding ventures as a caterer and author. Entertaining was one of many books to come by Martha that used Turkey Hill as the stage and platform from which to present her ideas on the domestic arts. Books on gardening, weddings, baking and Christmas all followed suit with Turkey Hill playing a prominent role in the books' photographs and text. With the launch of her magazine (Martha Stewart Living) in 1990, Turkey Hill again played centerpiece to Martha's articles and photographs, becoming a laboratory for story development, craft ideas, gardening information and decorating advice. The house took on a new, celluloid energy when it was filmed for a number of videos about entertaining and cooking sold through Kmart. In 1993 it was featured weekly (and then daily) on Martha's new television show. The house took on an almost mythological role as it became increasingly visible in all of Martha's offerings, including an entire line of furniture through Martha Stewart Signature and Bernhardt that is based on furniture housed at Turkey Hill.

The chicken coop: le Palais Des Poulets

While the grounds saw enormous changes under Martha's care, little was done to the interior and exterior of the home since its initial renovation by Martha in the '70s. New collections of antiques were amassed but not always displayed. The attic and the bedrooms had unfortunately become, by Martha's own admission, little more than tasteful recepticles for many of her treasured finds and books.

In 1998 Martha finally embarked on a massive redecorating project and brought it all up to date, removing shutters from the windows, covering a useless window in the dining room to allow more wall space for art display, redoing the kitchen from top to bottom, reupholstering all the furniture, repainting the entire house, replacing the old floors with new pumpkin pine, creating new built-in shelves in the library, converting the back hall into a second library and reorganizing the entire house to free it of clutter and pare down her collections.

With only three bedrooms and a basic layout of four rooms over four, the size of the main house is somewhat modest compared to some of the other homes in the area. But its legacy and its history and its impact on the lives of Martha's readers and viewers is indelible. Turkey Hill will forever be remembered as Martha's most famous house, as the house that started it all.

The back porch was frequently used for entertaining small groups.

The kitchen after it was renovated in the 1990s - quite a change from the rustic style of the kitchen as it appeared in the 1980s, shown above.

The dining area in the kitchen. Two large, industrial-sized refrigerators held all the necessities.

'Being Martha' Review

Every so often a book comes along that makes me want to turn right back to the introduction and start reading it all over again. “Being Martha” by Lloyd Allen is one such book.

An inside look at the life and times of Martha Stewart, Being Martha is told from the perspective of a friend and former neighbour of the woman the world has come to know simply as Martha. (There really is only one!) Author Lloyd Allen knows Martha personally and has watched her ventures grow from a basement catering operation to one of the most successful and unlikely American enterprises ever built.

The book is filled with personal accounts of Martha’s formative years as a caterer in Westport, Connecticut, as well as exclusive interviews with family members, including Martha’s daughter, Alexis, her mother, Martha Kostyra, her brother George and her sister Laura.

The book emerged as a kind of antidote to all the negative portrayals of Martha that were growing like strangling ragweed in the press during the investigation into her now-infamous stock sale, subsequent trial and jail sentence.

“This book gives a fuller portrait than we have seen before of a complicated and fascinating woman. My hope is that by reading this more complete view of Martha you will have a better understanding of who and why she is,” Lloyd writes in his introduction.

And his hope is fulfilled.

Not only does the reader come to understand the “who” and the “why” of all that encompasses the great Martha Stewart, we understand, too, what it is to live life to the fullest – with the fullest vision, the fullest desire, the fullest appreciation of all that is alive and green and good.

It is no coincidence that her magazine and company are entitled “Living.”

The stories and anecdotes in Being Martha span a breadth of history, most of it undulating in the kitchens of Turkey Hill – Martha’s now-famous home in Westport where her ventures originally began. There is a chapter about the author’s visit with Martha at the Alderson prison and still others about her growing empire: stories from her television studios are especially revealing.

What we see through Lloyd’s eyes is a woman who is driven by a passion for life and energy to create. We see a woman who is compelled to live as fully and artfully as possible and come to understand why she is this way. We get an understanding of her childhood life with tales from her mother. We see what she is like as a mom through Alexis’s comments.
We also see a woman on a mission. We see a woman who is impatient and temperamental but always forgiving in the end. We see a woman who draws people to her through a magnetism rarely seen in the annals of human history and who harnesses the energies of those people with sheer inspiration and, perhaps, a few commands!

And we see a woman with regrets, with some degree of sadness for what she lost on her climb to the top and with an ability to cry and be reflective in private moments. She is not a woman of steel.

Reading “Being Martha” will inspire you. It is about Martha Stewart, yes, but it is also about life and the process of living. It is about human nature, too.
Once I had finished it, I got in touch with Lloyd to tell him what I thought of the book and he agreed to answer a few questions for me about Martha and some of his recent activities in promoting the book.

Lloyd recently visited Alderson prison to give a lecture and sign some copies of his book. Here are his answers to my questions:

1. Describe your recent visit to Alderson! In detail!

Even though it is a 10 hour drive, I decided to drive to Alderson, West Virginia to give 2 lectures and do a book signing. Thoughts of the beauty of early spring flowering trees and shrubs and the landscape of the Shenandoah Valley convinced me that taking a plane was a no-no. I was there at the behest of John and Betty Alderson. It was the Alderson Store's 120th Anniversary and Betty invited me to "come on down" and stay for a few days and involve myself in various events. There is nothing like Southern hospitality.

It was my birthday and I left early on April 6th, arriving at 4:30 in the afternoon. I knew the house I would be staying in because when I visited Martha during her stay at Alderson Federal Prison, Betty had offered up one of the family homes. No sooner had I pulled into the driveway, than Betty and John were parked behind me. I brought my bags in, I washed my face and we were off!

I was given a tour of the town and then we went to their house where I met Mary, one of 2 daughters. After some wine and cheese, I found myself back in the front seat of the car heading into the countryside. Remember, I'm in the Appalachian Mountains on positively the most winding road I have ever been on with the most idyllic scenery passing me by. We arrive shortly at a wonderful 2-story red brick home to pick up a friend of the family, who just happened to be the 2nd warden of the prison. She was 90 years old but sharp as a tack. We were then off to dinner. The warden entertained me the whole evening with stories of way back when. When she had been the warden the famous prisoners included Billie Holiday, Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally and the wife and daughter of Machine Gun Kelly. Her stories were non-stop.

When the discussion turned to Martha she asked me, "Lloyd, what did Martha think of Alderson?" I replied, "Well, the women and Martha didn't like the warden." Everyone got a big laugh, and this is no reflection on the woman that I was sitting across the table from. Our banter about Martha continued, but being that this was a small town and everyone knew everyone, well, I was introduced to the lady whose husband was charged with the responsibility of shining the light in the prisoners’ faces every night to make sure they were in bed. She said to me, "Martha hated that!"

So this was the beginning of my 3 days in Alderson. The following day I gave a "Martha Lecture" inside the prison to a women's community group followed by lunch and then a book signing back at the Alderson Store. Betty had a brand new T-Shirt she was selling that said, "I spent time in Alderson." This was a follow-up to other classics such as, "West Virginia Living is a Good Thing" and "London, Paris, New York, Alderson." I am planning on giving Martha the new T-Shirt next week. I think she'll get a big laugh out of it. I'd like to see her wear it on her show.

2. What is your favorite "Martha Moment?"

I have so many moments with her from long ago that touched me deeply but my favorite moment at this time in my life was my visit with her in prison. Now, understand I was 3/4 way into the book, I knew she would make a comeback and here I was going to see a woman I adored, a famous woman that millions adored, and I was going to visit her in prison. This is a story you tell your grandchildren! I wrote a whole chapter about my visit in Being Martha. Many have asked why I didn't interview others for the chapter, like fellow prisoners. I just wanted to write a chapter that described the event of the visit. Yes, I threw in a bit of background that I was aware of, from talking to family and Martha herself, but I think I got across a "Martha Moment" in the chapter.

And this reminds me. My recent visit to Alderson assured me that the town has been changed forever. It will never get over the fact that Martha came and put the town on the map. The world knows Alderson and perhaps one day it will become the tourist attraction it once was back in the days when people visited the area for the healing sulfur springs.

3. Do you know if Martha has read the book and what she thinks of it?

Martha has read the book. I have not discussed it with her. This is not Martha's way. I received the heads-up from various people that work for her. There were a few girls that worried what Martha might think about their remarks in the book. Everyone at MSO was nervous before it came out, but after reading it and seeing the book at Martha's home (I had one of her brothers-in-law hand deliver it to her), they all breathed a sigh or relief.

4. What do you consider to be Martha's greatest achievement?

Martha's greatest achievement is a work in progress; you can't put a finger on it. She is a great female for all women to look to for inspiration. Her inner strength is unmatched and you will never meet a more focused individual. Martha has gone where no other woman has gone. She has opened the gate. She has conquered and taken no prisoners. She has legions of followers and a skilled army of artisans and business personnel that ensures her continued success. Martha is one of the brilliant minds of the 21 Century. If I had to pick her greatest achievement I would say that is the most apparent one: that Martha persisted with her message of home and the importance of domesticity. In the face of jokes, parodies and criticism she was undaunted and unwavering in her passion for life and to send that message to all that wanted to listen.

I have a story that came to me too late to make it to print. Take yourself back to the day of 9-11, take yourself back to the tragedy of it all and you will understand what I am about to tell you. A daughter phoned her father, he was living in New York City, had seen it all and was trying to recover, find some solace, some peace. His daughter asked him what he planned on doing. He simply said, "I'm going to pour a glass of wine, sit in a comfortable chair and open my Martha Stewart Living magazine and take it all in.”

Telling? I think it speaks volumes about Martha.

I wrote a number of passages that never made it into the book. Here is one. In it I tried to get across the mythic proportions of this great person as I thought back to early events in her career. This has to be a memory I have from early Turkey Hill. I wanted this little piece at the front of Being Martha, but of course, I was over-ruled. In America, you don't write a book, you "put it together," as there is no time to completely write a book; the market can't wait. Bear with me...

Long Ago…
Strewn about on the white flour-dusted counter top of her kitchen, even the Polaroid photos glimmered - insufficient super-glossy attestations of what was still to come. Nearby, a galvanized garbage can, the lid lifted and left leaning like a discarded female gladiator’s shield, played coliseum to the felled remains of the day’s Photographic Gastronome Games, a veritable PGG tournament if you will.

Apples cored and quartered, peaches pitted, the paired skin of carrots apparent, while plenty of potatoes bore signs of being skinned, halved and scored. Down in the garbage, tightly tied throngs of lily of the valley, every head turned down, stood segregated and sad against the 20-gallon rotund walls, while pompous pink peonies regaled the daisies and foxglove with their stories and lofty observations of the day’s barbarism. The worldly and wizened wisteria prophesied fantastic apocalyptic fairy tales, proclaiming, “It’s never over as quick as it begins.”

All this living matter, tragically wasting and in the process becoming slowly immortalized (so to speak); this organic shrapnel held the only real clues to understanding Martha, her past and future, but to try and “put all the pieces back together again,” was a greater scientific challenge than dealing with poor old Humpty Dumpty’s predicament. So barring any unforeseen miracle or dark magic, these pieces of proof will lie like discarded mythic tales and unnoticed tea leaves and serve us little as we try to piece Martha's life back together again.