Schmidt's creative watershed, 1926, culminated in the building of his own country house, whimsically named from a children’s book by Rudyard Kipling. The building won first prize in a 1931 competition for “A Common Brick House,” published in The Architectural Forum. Significantly, the jury included John Russell Pope, whose elegant classical houses clearly inspired the younger Schmidt. Sources for this design also include the country houses of Charles Platt, whom Schmidt admired above all other eclectic designers, and the “stripped” Georgian work of Delano & Aldrich, particularly Woodside, the 1916 residence of James A. Burden in Syosset, New York. The house was exhibited three times at the Architectural League of New York and was featured in its 1932 yearbook. The estate has a separate, charmingly simple stable block and featured a farmstead-like landscape design which made the most of a unique hillside site. Sold by the architect in the 1950s, the house has been slightly altered, and the gardens remain relatively true to the original concept.