Some homes announce themselves before you ever step inside. For Dana Garman Jacobsen, the Aspen house she shares with her husband, Jim Jacobsen, did exactly that—first as a whimsical afterthought grounded in pandemic blues, then as a physical pull she couldn’t shake. “I kept coming back to this one house,” she says. On a ski trip, she walked the neighborhood, tracing its rhythms, its stillness, its vantage points. The house—that house—was waiting.
Jacobsen remembers the chaos of timing—they were mid-build on a house in Mexico—but Garman Jacobsen’s instinct was crystal clear. “The house stuck with her,” he says. “It had the same post-and-beam spirit as our [Richard] Neutra [home] in Los Angeles—the sightlines, the way it frames the mountains.”
Buying the home also meant safeguarding its history. Its former owner, Joan Harris—the Chicago philanthropist behind Aspen’s Harris Concert Hall—had preserved the structure as one of the few 1970s West End houses still standing. Garman Jacobsen wrote her directly in advance of the sale, and the gesture worked. As Jacobsen puts it, “People don’t want you to bastardize their houses. These homes have provenance.”
Inside, the house reveals its eccentricities: a swimming pool integrated into the main living space, architectural nooks that shift with the seasons, and postcard-perfect shadows that Garman Jacobsen describes as “beautiful little frames everywhere your eye rests.” Their son Jasper grew up swimming under a glass ceiling where snow sometimes falls inches above in the wintertime. “It’s pretty magical,” Garman Jacobsen coos.
The home’s soul extends to its furnishings. Garman Jacobsen and Jacobsen sourced a 150-year-old walnut tree from Petaluma to craft the bed frames, blending heritage craftsmanship with personal history. Classic pieces from Garman Jacobsen’s collection —Børge Mogensen sofas, a Poltrona Frau Chester piece, and a Biedermeier chaise lounge (which Garman Jacobsen has had since she was 22)—anchor the interiors, connecting the house to an archive of taste and memory.
Their life in Aspen mirrors that home’s soulfulness: walking the Rio; catching music at the Aspen Institute; the kids’s Nerf wars looping through the circular floor plan; artists and friends staying for extended periods. “These are character houses,” Jacobsen says. “And Aspen’s always been full of character people.” For Garman Jacobsen, the feeling is simpler: “It’s slow and beautiful. Cozy and vibey. They just don’t make them like this anymore.”
in your life?
