North Fork Revival Cottage 440K

The one that got away, above

A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, I started this blog with a post moaning about the “perfect cottage” that got away. Someone went to contract on it, for 275K, as I was driving out to South Jamesport, Long Island, to take a look. I was bummed about it for months.

It was very special, part of a circle of late 19th century gingerbread-style summer cottages once used for revival meetings, similar to those found in Ocean Grove, N.J., and Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. I hadn’t known any such thing existed on Long Island until I saw this group. I’ve revisited it a couple of times since. “My” house has been painted and fixed up, but not TOO fixed up. The beauty of this particular cottage, for me, is that it was completely un-renovated, with old-fashioned bathrooms and kitchens, just the way I like my old houses.

The one you can have

Well, guess what? The cottage next door is now on the market, and has been for about a month. Yesterday I swung by to see for myself. From the outside, it’s a charmer, unlike a couple of houses in the circle that have been more or less ruined. It’s set back a little for a nice, tucked-away feeling, and it’s bigger than the other, with a separate garage and shed. Looks to be in fine condition; it’s even winterized and has central air.

Side view

The kitchen, however, to judge from the listing pics, looks like a bit of a modern horror show, and though the house has some period detail, including windows edged with colored glass, it could take some doing to restore the original feel.

Outbuildings

Campground Circle is a five-minute bike ride from a good Peconic Bay beach, and I think the asking price is fair.

Someone go buy it, and hurry. Click here for the listing, in case you missed it the first time;-)

Other buildings on Campground Circle, above

Shoestring Summer Decorating

I LOVE VINTAGE RATTAN FURNITURE so much, I once thought of opening a store devoted to it and calling it Bamboozled. I didn’t, for many reasons, but I’m still a sucker for the stuff. It’s sturdy, stylish, and cheap. (Rattan is not the same as bamboo — it doesn’t have divisions — so the store’s name would have been a misnomer anyway).

The problem is that the vintage rattan furniture you find at yard sales and thrift shops rarely has cushions. So my weakness for it often results in my buying something for a pittance that I then discover costs $1,800 to custom-upholster — like the 1970s Ficks Reed set I found on the street in Brooklyn, which now reposes, cushion-less, in my basement.

I’m very happy with the 1930s stick rattan sofa, above. It was in this house when I bought it, dark green. I painted it white and got cushions from Restoration Hardware that fit perfectly. (The seat cushions are actually floor cushions and not very cushy, but they fit.) It’s on the porch now, along with two wicker chairs and two wicker tables, bought for $5 each at a yard sale (cushions from Home Depot). My latest additions are two butterfly chairs with covers from Urban Outfitters in NYC, the only place I know to get them — fun ones, too (they have a great cabbage-rose pattern, but the graphic blue & white is more beach house).

Moving the stick rattan sofa to the porch left a gap in my living room that needed filling. Well, this morning I went to a nearby yard sale at 9AM and found….another vintage rattan sofa with no cushions, top. It’s a three-piece sectional with nice lines. Hard to pinpoint the era — possibly ’60s or ’70s. Anyway, it was $50 and I saw it would fit the space perfectly. Though mindful of the cushion problem, I snapped it up and brought it home.

Now it happens that I also have, sitting around in boxes from Crate & Barrel, four striped 20″ square floor cushions which I ordered on sale recently for these metal lounge chairs, below (I have four of them, found last summer near a dumpster in Napeague):

The Crate & Barrel cushions didn’t fit the metal chairs well; they were a couple of inches too small. It seems that furniture dimensions have changed a lot in the past 30, 40 years. Very rarely do the cushions sold by today’s catalogue companies match up with vintage pieces. I was thinking of sending them back, but now it appears I don’t have to.

I set my new sofa under the window where I envisioned it and tried three cushions. Too small. But then I tried all four cushions on the three sections. By jamming them in a bit (and cable-tying the three sections together for stability), I made it work. Keepers!

I still need back cushions, but that can be finessed.

Along with my $200 classic picnic table from Agway, below, which I love — it’s heavy enough not to wobble on my wood-chip “patio,” and surprisingly not uncomfortable — I’m ready for summer entertaining. Now all I need are a grill and some guests.

Discovering More of Philadelphia

I LOVE GOING WHERE I’VE NEVER BEEN BEFORE, particularly when it’s to older neighborhoods as lovely and green as Philadelphia’s Mt. Airy. The 19th century houses, many made of stone, have front porches and deep yards — somewhat Southern in feeling, like nothing you would see in New York.

I was there Sunday to visit several private gardens which were open to public view as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program, and found they lived up to their billing as artful and ‘delightfully personal.’

My favorite of Sunday’s gardens was Lindsay Weightman’s and Hani Zaki’s, all pics above, a testament to all one can do in shady urban space, with a grape arbor, water pots, and multi-level decking. An atmospheric stone ‘outdoor room,’ below, is outfitted with a dining table, chandeliers, and a pizza oven.

Exotic artifacts and architectural salvage, collected by the homeowners on their travels, are incorporated into the garden’s structure.

I also enjoyed the long, narrow (18’x150′)  backyard of Eric Sternfels, above, behind an 1840s trinity house. The unpromising space manages to be surprising and harmonious, with mature perennials arranged along a serpentine brick path that draws you along to the finish line. Sternfels’ own whimsical sculptures, below, hang  at intervals along the way.

We had lunch at the High Point Cafe, where they make crepes to order, imagining how pleasant it must be to live in such a civilized, garden-loving part of town.

Hudson River Victorian 399K

Get your turret and wraparound porch right here!

I IDENTIFIED IMMEDIATELY with Phyllis of Reclaimed Home when I first read her blog (subtitle: Low Impact Housing and Renovation Options for Thrifty New Yorkers). She and her husband are serial renovators; they’ve bounced back and forth between Brooklyn (first Park Slope, now Bed-Stuy) and the Hudson Valley (Kingston first, more recently Beacon) for years. She’s also a real estate broker and funny as hell.

Phyllis and her husband are about to bounce again, back to the city full-time, and have just put their outrageous c. 1900 Queen Anne house in Beacon, N.Y. (best known as home of Dia:Beacon, the contemporary art museum) on the market.

It’s 4BR on 1/4 acre and loaded with period detail: fabulous woodwork and staircase, vintage hardwood floors throughout, wavy glass windows, ornate antique radiators, fireplace mantel, old school bathtubs, original plaster, and lots of colorful Bradbury wallpaper. Not to mention upgraded mechanicals and a pretty backyard.

Go here and let Phyllis tell you all about it, give you the run-down on living in Beacon, and show you lots more pictures.

The official listing is here.

Playing Tourist in Philly

The brand-new LeMeridien in Center City

TODAY BEGAN WITH COFFEE AND A CROISSANT at the Reading Terminal Market, an indoor foodie paradise the likes of which no city should be without (though I know of no other such place anywhere) — scores of stalls, from butchers and bakers to candlestick makers, literally. There are outposts of old-school Italian bakeries, Amish cheese makers, stalls selling Provençal linens and beeswax scented candles, handmade chocolates and unusual flowers — everything varied and fresh and reasonably priced.

We stopped in to the Wood Turning Center in Old City, a unique gallery whose current exhibition, “Magical Realism,” features a major work, above, by Randall Rosenthal, my neighbor in Springs — one of Randy’s extraordinary, carved-from-one-piece sculptures. This one is a creative jumble of pads and notebooks, so realistically carved and handpainted you could well mistake it for the real thing.

Then Nancy and I drove 30 miles south into Delaware’s Brandywine River Valley and spent the afternoon at Winterthur, above, the well-known 200-acre estate belonging to Henry Francis DuPont. His 175-room mansion is crammed with important American furniture and antiques. It’s more museum than historic home (H.F. removed bathrooms and kitchens to make more room for the display of objects). The interior of the house, which was built in the late 1800s and twice added on to before H.F.’s  death in 1969, is intentionally a pastiche of styles, with little architectural integrity of its  own. A fanatic collector, DuPont salvaged moldings and paneling and floorboards, even staircases, from various sources, composing some rooms in Federal style, others in Colonial fashion, and so on.

For me, the highlights of our hour-long intro tour of just two of the seven floors were the rooms with wraparound scenic wallpaper — one with Chinese vernacular scenes of the 1700s, above — and the big blowsy flower arrangements, specifically required by H.F. in his will.

We took a tram tour of the grounds, which are gorgeous — all rolling hills and meadows with grazing sheep and ancient cherry trees and sycamores. As an arboretum, Winterthur is unsurpassed, but overall, the experience paled in comparison to yesterday’s exhilarating visit to Chanticleer.

Returning to Philly in the late afternoon, we drove up to Fishtown for a look around, and had a beer at Standard Tap (I’m not much of a beer drinker, but the beers at this place are all local and on draft). We had dinner, on my son Max’s recommendation, at Southwark in Queen Village, a civilized change from the noise and madness we encountered the night before at El Vez, Steve Starr’s gimmicky, wildly popular Mexican restaurant in Center City.

We’re camped at Le Meridien, a sleek two-week-old hotel in a 10-story Georgian Revival building that has been done up by the Starwood chain in mod Eurostyle, top, above, and below. It’s fun walking into the lively lobby bar and reception area, where the building’s original carved decoration is set off by crisp 21st century furnishings, dramatic lighting, and abstract art. The hotel’s location couldn’t be more central — it’s right behind City Hall and next to the park with Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE sculpture.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow: a visit to several small private gardens in the Mt. Airy section, where I’ve never been (participants in the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program), and a final stop at Greensgrow Farms in Kensington on the way back up 95, where I hope to find some out-of-the-ordinary annuals.