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MASTIC BEACH AND SHIRLEY, twin communities 90 minutes east of New York City on Long Island’s South Shore, have the same superb, white-sand beach as Fire Island or the Hamptons, the same mighty ocean and glorious sunsets, but they can’t seem to catch a break. Right next to tony Bellport, with its golf course and yacht club, Mastic and Shirley have struggled for years with social issues. Housing prices, never very high, have taken a beating in the recent downtown.
On April 3, The New York Times Real Estate section ran a “Living in…” column that laid out the area’s pros and cons quite clearly. (In years past, Mastic Beach was a Suffolk County dumping ground for sex offenders, and lax regulations on absentee landlords sometimes resulted in three immigrant families sharing a house.) But many people say they live there happily and without a problem.
The classic 1945 beach cottage, below, is on a large lot with mature trees. It has been reduced to 180K from the low 200′s. It’s not winterized, but it’s a short walk to a fine bay beach.
For more info, go here and search on listing #2151013.
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I looked in Mastic Beach and Shirley in December ’07, at the start of my beach-cottage quest. I was curious, and enthused enough by the proximity to the ocean and the availability of inexpensive WWII-era cottages that I talked to a couple of local residents — a teacher and an artist, both of whom love living there. I even tried to drum up interest among some of my Brooklyn buddies, hoping to create a movement (I failed).
Ultimately, I decided the area was too downscale, realized there’s not much of a summer rental market, and moved my search farther east, to Quogue, Hampton Bays, and the North Fork. But I believe that, 10 or 20 years from now, things will be much improved, and I suspect that the area’s reputation is more a problem than the reality.
For those with a pioneering spirit and the patience to wait for the turnaround, Mastic Beach and Shirley are worth a look.
If I were looking today, I might check out this creekfront property for 199K, with a cottage built in 1939. For more info, go to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island and search on listing #2137081.
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This one, built in 1930, apparently needs a lot of work, but it’s got the look that I love. They’re asking 100K cash. For more info, go here and search on listing #2097229.
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There are many other intriguing possibilities. You might have to look past a few rusting cars and major appliances on unmowed lawns here and there.
On the other hand, Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, owns an estate in Mastic Beach — 9 acres behind a gate, but still!
PEOPLE USED TO ACCUSE Michael Eastman of being “more of a painter than a photographer.” He took it as a criticism. But lately, the 62-year-old artist said, he’s realized “That’s who I am.”
Eastman’s luscious depictions of decaying rooms, from the grand to the vernacular, will be on view May 7 through June 30 at Barry Friedman, Ltd. in Chelsea.
“Interiors” includes work from four Eastman series: Italy, Cuba, Vanished America, and Urban Luminosity.
I need say no more. Just look at these pictures.
MARY-LIZ CAMPBELL’S cottage-style house in Rye, N.Y., sits on a challenging site: wedge-shaped, steeply sloping, and not quite one-eighth of an acre.
A professional landscape designer, she has surrounded the house with exuberant perennial beds, shade gardens, a peaceful dining patio, attractive storage sheds, and garden ornaments reflecting time spent in the Far East.
When she bought the house 12 years ago, there was nothing but a few sad foundation plantings. Her first order of business was to screen views of the neighbors’ houses with fencing, trees and shrubs. From the first, she knew she didn’t want a lot of grass. “I wanted privacy all around — that drove the design.”
The pictures below illustrate a walk around the perimeter of the house, starting with the sunny beds next to the front door, descending to a stepping-stone path that runs along one side of the house, then onto the swath of lawn in the shady backyard, overlooked by the dining patio, and finally up through terraced planting beds to the gravel path and stone steps that lead back up to the front of the property.
The photos of the shady areas were taken in June, the rest in August, when there’s lots of floral color. Mary-Liz likes hot colors. Her favorite combination is chartreuse and burgundy: smoke tree with flowering plum, or limelight hydrangea next to mellow yellow spirea.
At the bottom of the post, more notes on how Mary-Liz achieved her colorful, creative results.
We start at the sunny area next to the front door, where a square boxwood hedge, a concrete urn and ornament, and architectonic plants like big-leafed hostas and ornamental grasses provide structure…
Looking down into the property from the street…
Below, Mary-Liz on the stepping-stone path along one side of the house…
Here’s the lawn and the shady backyard as it looks in June…
The lattice-fenced dining patio at the rear of the house overlooks the backyard…
Abundant container plantings on the patio, and a custom garden shed whose roof shingles match those on the house…
The concrete ball is a water feature…
Left and below, color from perennials in August…
A serene Buddha, and an arbor, below, as we start to ascend on the other side of the lawn…
A gravel path and more shade plantings lead back up to the front of the property.
In the very first season she owned the house, Mary-Liz did the following:
- Took down eight existing trees, including three dead hemlocks; retained a locust and a spruce, as well as a dual-stem mulberry for screening, which she prunes back once a year to control its size
- Moved inconvenient original parking from top of property near street to a gravel court in front of the house
- Fenced and planted property for screening from the street and privacy around the perimeter, using broad-leaved evergreens, spring-flowering shrubs, tall rhodies, hollies, willow wood viburnums and double file viburnums
- Built a garden shed on the back patio with a cupola and stained glass window (both found at tag sales)
- Built lattice around existing concrete slab terrace at rear of house, and added a pergola on top for privacy from neighbors above
The following season, she recalls, “I started fooling around in the garden and nothing would grow. The soil was shallow and plants couldn’t anchor themselves” – so she brought in 18 yards of top soil.
“Then I went to Italy and decided the only way I could make this lot work was to terrace it” – so she found masons and, over the next couple of years, as finances permitted, built stone terraces for garden beds, then planted shrubs and perennials in the newly terraced areas.
Since then, the garden has evolved with changing conditions. There’s less and less sun, mostly because of the mulberry.
Mary-Liz swears she doesn’t spend a load of time gardening. “It’s not a high-maintenance garden. I have a lot of shrubs. But I’m always thinking what I’m going to do next – I’d like to put in a pond. Gardens are never finished.”
Come take a walk around a sloping, wedge-shaped site in Westchester County, where landscape designer Mary-Liz Campbell has created lushness and variety on less than 1/8 acre.
BACK IN DECEMBER, I started this blog with a post about my search for the ‘perfect’ beach (or country) cottage, and took you along on some of my house-hunting forays to the North Fork and Hudson Valley.
In January, I saw a 1950s cedar-shingled cottage on half an acre in Springs, a hamlet a few miles north of East Hampton on Long Island’s South Fork. I went to contract on it in early March, applied for a mortgage, and while I was waiting, shared my doubts and what-ifs in another blog post. (There are a few pics of the interior on that one, and also a couple here.) I finally got mortgage approval Friday — it took more than a month — and I expect to close soon, perhaps within the week.
The going has not been all that smooth. Reaching a price with the seller wasn’t difficult. She had started out asking 450K; by the time I saw it, it had been on the market about 9 months and was reduced to 400K. The real estate broker told me she had accepted an offer of 350K but that person had been unable to get financing, and then the market crashed. So she took my offer of 320K.
Now I’m told that someone is waiting in the wings to pay more if I back out for any reason, and it’s been implied (by my lawyer, no less) that the seller would like me to back out. Not gonna happen.
Not even since I found out yesterday that the boiler is way messed up, hazardous to operate, and requires a $2,900 fix or $5,000 replacement.
Over the winter, while the house was unoccupied, the plumbing pipes, which had not been properly drained by the owner (who is elderly and lives upstate), froze and burst. The plumber, whom the seller’s broker hired to repair them, stole the only furnishings of value from the house — an antique gate-leg table, a filigreed metal mirror, and a Victorian etched glass lighting fixture. The contract of sale stipulated that all furnishings be left in the house.
The broker called the police. The plumber confessed to having taken the items; he said he thought “everything was going in a dumpster.” The items have been returned, but the antique table is now broken, and I have no faith in the sketchy plumber’s work ethic, especially since there’s a growing pool of water in the basement from two leaks the plumber actually created.
Below: My new garage, oy
When I first saw the house, the front door was stuck open — about a foot ajar — so that the house was open to the elements and potential vandals. It was “secured” by a handyman hired by the real estate broker, with the result that it is now wedged inoperably closed (fortunately there’s a back door).
But…but…but…I’m going through with it. I still like the place. When I was there on Friday with the boiler inspector and then an arborist (there are several huge dead trees that need to come down), it felt good to be there. It felt right. It felt me.
Am I over the moon about it? No. The cottage is far from perfect, though it’s sweet, and I think it’s a good investment. My interest rate will be under 5%, and the way I figure it, I’ll be able to use it a month each summer, if I want to, and still break even, if I manage to rent it out the rest of the year. Or maybe I’ll use it more; the monthly nut is well under $2,000.
I can see myself painting there (walls, not art), decorating, gardening, listening to music. I met my next door neighbor, and he’s nice. I seem to be surrounded by middle-aged couples from Manhattan, weekenders, who bought their places 30 years ago (and are still there, a good sign). I’ll feel safe.
It was quiet. Quieter than it has been on my previous visits, maybe because it was Good Friday. Very little traffic on the road.
Best of all, the arborist pointed out all the trees and flowering shrubs on the property. It’s very early spring there; the forsythia are not even blooming, and it’s hard to tell what’s what. I have five enormous rhododendrons that my neighbor says bloom magnificently; a rose of sharon hedge; a ginormous burning bush (I always wanted a burning bush!), stands of ferns and juniper; several specimen conifers with twisty trunks and droopy needles.
Everything is heavily browsed by deer, so many trees and shrubs are bare below the four-foot mark. On the plus side, that’s because the property backs up to town land; it’s very woodsy.
I have a fallen-down garage (or shed) to haul away, a boiler to fix, a chimney to repair, a stove and washer/dryer to replace. Such are the joys of home ownership.
Well, I wanted a project, and now I have one.
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