PM Real Estate Photography / Compass
Just outside Austin, in Lakeway, Texas, a renowned local home is seeking a new proprietor for $1.99 million.
The abode is a local icon known as the Sand Dollar House (or “the mushroom house,” depending who you ask) for its aerial resemblance to the sea urchin species thanks to the teardrop-shaped skylights dotting its roof.
Built in 1979 by the architect John Covert Watson, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, the steel and gunite compound is easily recognizable for its circular shape and prominent location on a bluff overlooking Lake Travis, Mansion Global first reported.
The current owners, fitness brand Tone It Up co-founder Karena Dawn and her husband, Bobby Goldstein, noticed it while boating on Lake Travis and purchased it for an unknown sum in 2021, at which point it was listed for $1.75 million, the outlet reported. After initially using the three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom as a weekend house, they began listing it as a short-term rental, and are selling as they’re ready to buy a new investment property.
“Anyone who has boated on Lake Travis in the last 40 years has looked up at it,” Michelle Jones, who shares the listing with her fellow Compass agent, Todd Grossman, told Mansion Global.
Watson initially constructed the 2,240-square-foot residence as a second house for the artist Eugenia Hunt, and the interior remains “perfectly original and very well maintained,” Dawn said to the publication. The couple did, however, renovate the address’ extensive decking.
Inside, the layout is defined by organic architecture, with curved white walls, custom windows, sliding doors and numerous places to access the various balconies and patios that wrap the property and extend to the lake’s edge.
The open-layout upper level has the fireplace-equipped living area flowing into the dining room. Also on this floor is the rounded kitchen, which offers a blend of blue tiles, wood cabinets and “appears to float above a lower deck,” as the listing puts it.
Down a spiral staircase with wood treads are all three bedrooms, each opening through glass doors onto a porch with lake views.