Even as a child, Linda Gray fantasized about living in a house by a river. In 2018, she finally set out to fulfil this dream, looking for a residence that could accommodate visits from her three sons and their families. But nothing she saw for sale quite matched that fantasy vision of hers. “When I was looking for a house with four or five bedrooms, everything was too cookie-cutter to me,” the real estate developer recalls.

Eventually, she found and fell in love with what she came to nickname the Hobbit House, due to its modest scale and its European wood-crafted charm. To transform the property, she hired New York–based interior designer David Frazier, who was equally smitten by its potential once he visited the site. “It’s this bucolic property in Colorado that’s tucked on a bend of the Eagle River, and it’s spread across three structures,” he says, referring to the main house (a two-bedroom cottage), the guest house (a third bedroom above a garage), and the underground wine cellar built into the side of an embankment.

The property was a rare find, for it had been built by the original owner, a well-known Austrian craftsman named Rudi Neumayr, who had moved to Colorado in 1979.  Neumayr—through his company Aren Design—has been responsible over the years for completing numerous architectural projects in the resort towns of  Vail and Aspen and beyond, often referencing in his designs the style and flavor typical of Alpine vernacular architecture.

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INTERIOR DESIGN BY DAVID FRAZIER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GIEVES ANDERSON

WRITTEN BY FRED VOON

This story appeared in the Winter 2026 issue of MILIEU.