Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Price: $3,500,000
This 8,120-square-foot modern mansion with a cantilevered prow was built to the specifications of the late Marvin Runyon, a Tennessee business exec who served as U.S. Postmaster General from 1992 to 1998, and according to a short item in Luxury Portfolio International, those specifications were exact. His wife, Sue Atkinson tells the author "it must have taken the mason six tries to stack the stones in a pattern that was just right." So interested parties can be assured that these limestone walls weren't haphazardly dry-stacked.
"In essence, it's an ultra-luxury treehouse capturing a different scene each season," says architect Seab Tuck, who is said to have met with the couple "every Saturday morning for three years," and whose firm, Tuck-Hinton, alsodesigned the extension to the Country Music Hall of Fame. (The very same extension which now contains the Taylor Swift Education Center.) These season-capturing capabilities are abetted by a "two-story sunroom" that, with windows thrown open, can act like a screened-in porch.
The layout, Tuck explains, "is very contemporary, but while most people expect stark white tones, we offset it with soft, natural materials to create a very rustic feel." Noteworthy material applications include floors of Chinese slate and reclaimed "heart-of-palm wood," steel-framed walls of glass, and exterior cladding of black-stained cedar.
According to Ms. Atkinson, she and her husband wanted "a home where we could entertain, but also one that was comfortable with only two people in it." The two guest suites are apparently removed enough from the shelf-lined master suite to make it feel like "it's almost two separate homes." Both are guarded by a terracotta warrior stationed in the entryway.
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