When Elmer and Berta met in San Francisco, they had both been part of a broad network of artists and intellectuals in the area. They became good friends, and, rather than return to San Francisco, Elmer went directly to New York when he was demobilized in February 1919. Berta was working for "McCall's". The two married in July of that year, then lived briefly in Greenwich Village. Seeking a more rustic setting, they left the city to rent the Lyall Cottage in Grand View-on-Hudson, a small town in rural Rockland County, New York on the west bank of the Hudson River. This would become the area where they would spend the rest of their lives. Their home, which took more than twenty years to construct, was largely built by the Haders and their friends, and the house became an art project in its own right. Elmer went so far as to extract the stones used to build the house from the earth himself. The Haders had a son in the early 1920s, Hamilton (named after the author Hamilton Williamson), who died from meningitis not long before he turned three. They retreated to a friend's home in Maine to grieve and heal. They returned to New York to continue work on their home and to continue their artistic careers contributing artwork to many magazines, creating broadsides, pamphlets, painting miniatures (Berta) and portraits (Elmer).