In Southwest Germantown lies a 6,000 Square foot castle called Redwall. Although it has been there since the 1940s, I have to admit that I only learned about it this past month from a post on the MoCoShow blog. With 6 acres of open land, the property boasts a labyrinth, a carriage house, a sword in the stone, and its own private movie theatre. Although I could spend the rest of this post discussing the sales history of the house or the fact that you can rent it (!!), the most interesting component of the Castle’s history is its architect.

Catherine Cutler was born in 1911 to Howard and Marie Cutler. Her father was a notable architect in his own right, designing hospitals during World War I, government buildings, and schools. She graduated from George Washington University in 1934 with a BA in architecture and became the first woman to be granted an architect license in the state within 2 years. She would design several Montgomery County Schools (including Bethesda Chevy Chase HS and Lynbrook ES) and buildings on the University of Maryland campus with her father.

When she was commissioned to build a home in 1940 for Clara Hyatt, a recently widowed and very wealthy woman, she made it one of her first solo designs. As Germantown was largely rural at the time, Cutler’s vision for the estate was not merely a manor house, but a functional farm — one that could be operated exclusively by Hyatt with no assistance from local farmhands who had all been drafted to fight in World War II. She created a vast irrigation network to keep the fields watered without aid. Hyatt only lived there for 7 years though before the house transferred hands several times.

Cutler went on to a successful solo career, designing several other buildings for the University of Maryland and Solomon’s Island. Shortly after the war, she got married and adopted a son — but she didn’t live very long to enjoy either her career or family. She passed away in 1968 after a long battle with cancer.