Shelburne Farms, on Lake Champlain near Burlington, Vermont, once comprised a 4000 acre property. Some of the land was sold off, and more recently, in making the transition from a private property to a property run by a non profit foundation, certain isolated and hidden parcels within the remaining property were sold in order to underwrite the foundation's endowment. These parcels were intelligently selected so as to be out of view of those who come to visit the farm's barns, to stay or dine at the inn, or to attend popular Mozart concerts on the lawn overlooking the lake.

The property's barns are remarkable. The breeding barn was at one time the largest clear spanned space in the country. The farm barn is a turreted courtyard building on the edge of a large meadow, the carriage barn a brick courtyard building down by the lake. Olmsted apparently separated the fields in a patchwork. This is a pattern that has distinguished the Vermont landscape generally since land was first cleared in the 1840's for sheep farming. This house is on Orchard Point, a prominence northeast of the original house, with views west over Lake Champlain,

and north over a bay to Burlington ten miles away. The house is approached by a gravel road from the southwest, from which it appears on a rise over a mowed field. The drive spirals east and south, to an entrance under the north wing, and either onto the porch, or into the courtyard.

The L-shaped configuration of the house derives from the wish both to have the expansive views of the lake and bay, and to enclose a lawn bounded by the house on the north and west, by a stand of Olmsted's cedars and firs to the south, and scattered birches and maples separating the lawn from a hay field to the east.

The principal room of the house is at the corner facing all views, and opening onto a porch and a terrace. The north wing, separated at ground level by the pass through, is a small barn, surmounted by a bedroom under a long shed roof dormer. The house has the shingle walls and copper roof that distinguish the property's barns.