The art collection includes cubist frescoes and paintings by Morris and Frelinghuysen, as well as works by Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Georges Braque, Joan Miró and Henri Matisse.

Shattuck hired architect James Renwick Jr., whose well-known commissions include the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C.

The estate was then purchased by Newbold Morris (the son of Augustus Newbold Morris), who hired Francis L. V. Hoppin and Terence Koen (who had also done work on Edith Wharton's The Mount) to design a grand Colonial Revival mansion house.

He had hired George Sanderson, a college classmate, to design the Modernist studio which was completed in 1930, taking inspiration from the groundbreaking work of Le Corbusier.

The house was added in 1941, after Morris and Frelinghuysen married, as an adjunct to the studio space, and is considered an early example of Mid-Century Modern architecture.