North Branch Container Home

In the tiny village of North Branch, New York, you will find a special two-story container home built onto the side of a small hill. The North Branch Container Home makes use of four shipping containers stacked on two levels and separated into two parallel banks.

If this house looks familiar, perhaps you’ve seen the Livingston Manor Container Home. Roughly 10 miles away, these two homes were created by the same designer/builder team and have somewhat similar hillside designs.

This country container home is well integrated into the six acres of land that surrounds it. As we mentioned, it’s built on to the side of a small hill, then juts out into the open air. The home sits in a grassy clearing that includes a tranquil fourteen-foot-deep pond, while the periphery of the property also includes bountiful mature trees.

The first floor of the home is built from two twenty-foot shipping containers, set four feet apart and resting on a concrete perimeter foundation. This is where the guest bedroom and bathroom are located, as well as the laundry and mechanical systems.

On top are two forty-foot containers, with one end resting on the twenty-foot containers below, and the other end resting on a concrete foundation cut into the hillside. On this level is the main bedroom and bathroom as well as the public spaces including the kitchen, dining, and living rooms.

Thanks to the filled-in four-foot gap between the two sets of containers, the floor areas on each level were expanded. The first floor would be 320 square feet with just containers, but ends up at about 400 square feet. The second floor would be 640 square feet with just containers, but is now actually 800 square feet.

Connecting the two levels are are internal spiral staircase cut through the roof of the bottom containers and the floor of the top containers. But the two levels are also connected in other ways, given the home’s emphasis on the outdoors.

You enter the home’s second floor through a covered porch on the north side that is accessed from the top of the hill. But if you wanted to, you could walk down the grassy hill to access the first floor of the home.

Additionally, the bridged portion of the second story provides a nice shaded area below. While there’s no exterior staircase, the hill itself is somewhat of a natural staircase given it’s proximity to and integration with the home. 

Once inside the home, you’re bathed in light from the numerous windows on all sides, though it’s the south and west facing windows that arguably have the best views of the property. The public areas are spacious and open, with multiple sliding doors that open to the 40-foot long cantilevered porch on the south side.

The interior also has the modern feel we normally see with container houses, including white cabinets, wooden barn doors, and creative fixtures. When you walk into the home from the main entrance, you have the kitchen and living spaces open in front of you to the right, so those southern views of the pond are available to everyone. To your left is the master suite. In the NW corner of the home you’ll find the spiral staircase that takes you to the guest suite below.

As we mentioned, full bathrooms are available on both levels, each with a sleek, minimalist design. And thanks to each of the suites being on separate ends of the home (and on separate levels as well), the home has a lot of privacy despite it’s smaller size.

Tying the two banks of containers together is the large, sloping roof. Built with wooden trusses that space across both containers, the roof provides additional area for insulation and has a generous slop to help with winter snow accumulation.

Yes, in this part of New York, you’re going to get some winter snow. But with an efficiently built container home (and a beautiful wood stove), you’ll be nice and warm inside after ice skating on the pond or sledding down the hill.

Given the scenic land, proximity to nearby towns like Callicoon and the Delaware River, and the compact but space-efficient design, this home would be a great weekend retreat or full-time country house. The multiple levels not only make the home more interesting architecturally, they also bring clear separation between different functions of the house.

A similar floorplan could be used almost anywhere, even using columns to support the second story if a hill wasn’t available on the land. We’d add an external staircase but otherwise could see this design being used anywhere there are views that could be enjoyed from a home with the main spaces above ground level.

This home previously sold for $365,000 in early 2020, though we don’t know it’s original construction cost. Earlier in its history, it was also used as a short-term rental, but the more recent owners seem to be happy using it all to themselves.