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NO ONE COULD ACCUSE THESE HOUSES of being cookie-cutter. While cruising the East Hampton listings in the $600-800,000 range, these two, er, unusual houses came up. They’re not entirely out of context. The Hamptons have long been known for outrageous beach-house architecture, some of it brilliant.
But I’m not sure what to make of these two. I like their spirit, but they seem to be trying way too hard. Architect-designed during a ’60s-’70s Hamptons building boom, they’re remnants of an age whose architecture is taking an awfully long time to become fashionable again, if ever it will be.
The white cube with giant fisheye, above, was designed by Henri Gueron. It was featured in Architectural Record, and in a book called The Great Houses (McGraw Hill), below. New to market, asking 799K, it’s tiny by today’s inflated standards: 2 beds, 2 baths, 950 square feet on half an acre, with a new pool, below, a fancy Italian kitchen, and a roof deck.
While the white box makes me cringe a little, the winged wood one, below, makes me laugh. Is it a nod in plywood to Saarinen’s TWA terminal or a Palm Springs gas station?
Known as the “Butterfly House,” it dates from 1964. The architect was Henry T. Howard (Google comes up short). Three bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,200 square feet, felicitously located on a wooded corner lot in Springs, not far from Accabonac Harbor and magnificent bay beaches. The interior, below, looks promising, and it was just reduced to 725K.
While I would prefer my next house to be a late 19th century shingled farmhouse with a front porch, as soothing and unchallenging as my beloved Impressionists, I would also kind of enjoy furnishing that crazy cube with classic modern furniture, rya rugs, and a nice, big Jackson Pollock.
The more I look at these two oddities, the better I like them. They’re interesting, and that’s more than can be said for most houses. They’re economically small. They’re secluded. But they’re strange. It will take a very special buyer, now and forever after, which makes these houses a pretty hard sell and a chancy investment. Maybe they’ll be highly prized in 30 years, if they don’t get torn down by then.
LATER THIS MONTH, I’m heading to Spain for a week with a friend and a camera. This trip is a radically abbreviated version of a dream I’ve had for years: spending the entire winter in southern Europe. But ya gotta start somewhere.
I’m going first to Madrid, then taking the train south to Seville, Granada, and Cordoba. It’s mainly a vacation and not a press trip, and I’m thrilled about that (though I have to pay for it). Still, I’ll be researching historic gardens and taking lots of notes and pictures, because I just can’t help myself.
We’ll go to the Alhambra, of course, but it’s the intimate courtyard and patio gardens I hope will inspire me for my own backyard. No doubt I’ll be bummed I can’t grow orange trees and oleander here on Long Island, but I’m sure there’s much to learn from the structural elements of Spanish gardens, even in winter.
So far, even though the trip is only two weeks away, I’ve done little advance planning, and I’ve never been to that part of Spain before. So if anyone has suggestions for places to stay, eat, go, or see, please let ‘em rip in the comments, and gracias!
Photo: View of the Alhambra, from Nino H’s Flickr photostream
CAN YOU GET A WATER VIEW in the Hamptons under or around 500K?
Yes, you can! The house won’t be much to look at, though.
Take the view of Amagansett’s Napeague Bay, top, for example. Here’s the house that goes with it, below. At 195 square feet on 1/12 of an acre, it’s barely one step up from a trailer. They’re asking 515K for it, too. But it’s a breathtaking view in an unspoiled area, and the so-called house is right smack on the water.
The beauty of a crummy house is that you can do anything you want with it. No historic detail to worry about. Where is Domino magazine when we need it? Those clever editors could have taken one of these ugly ducks and transformed it into a stylish swan in a weekend.
Have a look at this barn-like structure in the Sag Harbor area, below, on the market for 475K. It’s on .70 acre, with woods in back, water in front.
Awkward on the outside, the interior is more appealing:
And the view, below, is sensational (unless the listing is misleading, which is always possible – I haven’t seen it).
My main aesthetic complaint with these places is the windows. Swapping out aluminum sliders for multi-paned windows and French doors would go a long way toward making these properties more attractive. As for landscaping: think ornamental grasses.
This one, below, is near me, in the Springs area of East Hampton. It’s little more than a shoebox. Asking 425K, the brown-paneled interior cries out for buckets of white paint.
Dig them motorized awnings. They’re to mitigate the glare of the sunsets over Three Mile Harbor (don’t go by that terrible picture, below, from the realtor’s site – it’s more beautiful than that).
A water view, be it ocean, bay, or harbor, is what the East End of Long Island is about, after all.
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Not at Home (An Interior of the Artist’s House), Joseph Guy Seymour, 1866
YESTERDAY I FINALLY MADE IT TO THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, along with thousands of others. Each time I come into Manhattan, I vow to dose myself with big-city culture, and usually end up doing errands.
The Contest for the Bouquet: The Family of Robert Gordon in their New York Dining Room, Eastman Johnson, c.1873
What drew me this time was a sweeping exhibition of genre paintings, American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915 — 103 of them over 9 galleries, borrowed from 45 museums — which runs through January 24. There are some familiar names and classic images (Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer) and many more I’d never heard of.
The Open Air Breakfast [Brooklyn], William Merritt Chase, c.1887
The paintings, by their nature, are loaded with information and historical context, even if I didn’t like all the techniques (some are rather brown and drab). I learned a lot reading the labels, which point out political references, allegorical symbolism, or statements about relationships between the races and the sexes that would have been tricky at the time to express in words. (That’s a woman of ‘easy virtue’ feeding the cat in the picture below; you can tell by her red-feathered hat.)
Chinese Restaurant, John Sloan, 1909
I could do without most of the hunting, boating, and frontier scenes, but I adore the domestic and urban street scenes that show how people really lived and felt and related, and looking at the clothing, faces, and finely observed details reminiscent of the Dutch masters, but that shed light on unexplored corners of our own history.
Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair, John Sloan, 1912
TO ALL OF YOU FOR 2010. Brighter days ahead!
Barn, Upper Red Hook, N.Y.
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