Zane Grey Museum - Building

Building

The house is along Scenic Drive, a short road along the Delaware River north of Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct, an early suspension bridge which still carries vehicle and foot traffic across the river between Pennsylvania and New York. Along the riverfront to the north, it is 300 feet (91 m) to the Delaware's confluence with the Lackawaxen River, the largest tributary of the Upper Delaware in Pennsylvania, resulting in slightly choppier water in front of the house. The grassy, maintained ground slopes gently from Pennsylvania Route 590 to the west toward the river, giving the house's east (front) a view across to undeveloped woods on the New York side in Minisink Ford.

In front of the house, the slope exposes the northern corner more than the southern one. There is a small unpaved parking lot, sign for the museum and state historical marker as well. The house is to the north of a cluster of other buildings in the neighborhood, most notably the former D&H Canal Co. Office, now a bed and breakfast.

The two-story clapboard-sided frame structure rises from an exposed bluestone foundation. It is three bays long by six wide, in an L-shaped plan. The older, east-west–oriented block of the house has a square hipped roof with two large pedimented dormer windows with dentilled lintels on the east and south sides, with a smaller jerkin-roofed dormer complementing the eastern one. The newer wing designed by Grey and built by his brother has a rectangular hipped roof of gentler pitch with three small jerkined dormers. Both roofs are surfaced with diamond-shaped shingles of white asbestos cement and pierced by a single brick chimney per wing.

A single wraparound porch with flat roof, balustrade and bracketed columns runs the length of the south and east elevations, combining two previously separate porches, one of which had lost its original roof in the floods of 1955. White wooden posts mark the house's corners, and the second-story windows have awnings.

Inside, the floor plans reflect the two sections' separate construction. The earlier one has a square plan, the later one a rectangular. Many original finishes and decorations remain. Opposite the original front door at the southeast corner is a brick fireplace trimmed with unglazed terra cotta, including egg-and-dart molding. A T-plan staircase has its original decorative balustrade and newel posts.

The northeast door is the main entrance to the newer wing. It opens onto a living space that runs the length and half the wodth of the addition. Opposite the door is its fireplace, likewise of brick and topped with a beveled mirror to a height of 7 feet (2.1 m). Behind it the library includes many original trim, particularly a 2-foot-4-inch (0.71 m) deep painted frieze depicting kachina dolls, reflecting Grey's interests in the Southwest. These rooms, and Grey's upstairs studio, house most of the museum exhibits and visitor interest today.