Designers’ House in Montauk

SURELY I’M ONE OF THE LAST DESIGN BLOGGERS to catch on to the work of this husband-and-wife team, a pair of former Hollywood set designers, below, who call themselves Roman and Williams even though their names are Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch (the firm is named after their grandfathers). They’ve designed public spaces and guest rooms for some of New York’s most aggressively trendy hotels — the Ace, the Standard, the Royalton — and their work has been published and re-published in World of Interiors, The New York Times, Metropolis, Remodelista, and scores of other publications, online and off. But it was only when I realized they have a house in Montauk, L.I., that I really took notice.

Their 2,000-square-foot pad on 3/4 acre has that raw, unheated look shared by my own beach house-to-be, so I lit upon all the photos of it I could find. Into the inspiration file — the one in my brain — they go. I like Roman and Williams’ vintage industrial sensibility, classic modern furniture, and ethnic touches, and the way it all seems put together with whatever flea market finds came to hand. I love that some of the interior is whitewashed, some is not, and the ceiling is largely unfinished. It’s a house that makes your typical decorating-magazine fodder look pretty soulless. I could do without the taxidermy, though.

For a slideshow of the house from the Roman and Williams website, go here. “Things We Made,” a book documenting the work of the duo’s first decade, was published last fall by Rizzoli.

Gateway to Gowanus

WHO WAS IT THAT SAID if you live long enough, you see everything? If you’ve lived in Brooklyn long enough (which I have — 35 years), you’ve seen the bleak no-person’s-land around the grievously polluted Gowanus Canal become a coveted place to live. The Whole Foods rapidly rising at the intersection of Third Avenue and Third Street is incontrovertible proof of the neighborhood’s arrival, along with a slew of new restaurants (Runner and Stone, Little Neck, The Pines, Fletcher’s Barbeque), catering to occupants of the new mid-rise buildings that have gone up along Fourth Avenue in the few years since NYC allowed residential construction up to 12 stories along that commercial corridor.

<– My oracle

Gowanus is still not a beautiful neighborhood — it has more car washes than trees — but it does have good skies, I’ll give it that. I was there yesterday to pick up a couple of things at Lowe’s, as well as needing to while away a mid-winter afternoon. To make it more interesting, I walked into Build It Green NYC, below, a year-old non-profit architectural salvage warehouse on Ninth Street. It’s the second in the city; the original, in Astoria, Queens, gets bulk construction materials coming off the Triborough Bridge, I was told (I’ll never call it the RFK Bridge, nor will I call the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel), but the Gowanus branch has an impressive stock of vintage sinks and woodwork and lighting fixtures. Worth checking out.

Then, as the day faded away, I stopped into Four and Twenty Blackbirds, one of the first signs of the Gowanus revival when it opened several years ago, for a cup of coffee and a piece of salted caramel apple pie. I needed to reassure myself that Brooklyn wasn’t turning into Manhattan, and this tin-walled, neighborhood-y spot, where people hunched over laptops and children did homework at communal tables, was just the thing to relieve my isolation and help pass the time until I received the email I was waiting for: confirmation, finally, of a closing date for the house I’ve been in the process of buying for …well, it’s nearly two years since I made my first inquiry to the owner. March 27 is the day; not as soon as I would like, but soon enough.

When I got home, I reached into my velvet bag of Viking Rune stones, seeking the meaning of this further delay, and counsel on how to spend spend the next few weeks of waiting on top of waiting. As always, the oracle was spot on. I drew Thurisaz (“Gateway”), Reversed, top, and read the interpretation in the accompanying book. It’s a Rune of “non-action,” as it happens, indicating further “work to be done both inside and outside yourself.”

“This Rune strengthens your ability to wait,” the book says. “The Gateway is not to be approached and passed through without contemplation. You will have reason to halt, to reconsider the old, to integrate the new. Take advantage of these halts.” (I feel I was doing just that with the pie.) “Be still, collect yourself, and wait on the Will of Heaven.”

Brooklyn the Beautiful

WITH DAFFODIL FOLIAGE PUSHING UP in the front yards of brownstone Brooklyn, the winter of my content is coming to an end. I’ve enjoyed this uninterrupted two-month spell of  life in my ever-amazing home borough, where you see things like the movie shoot, above, on Prospect Park West, when you go out for your Sunday morning walk.

We’ve had our bit of snow (that’s the cherry orchard at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, with the Brooklyn Museum in the distance, above, as it looked a week ago Friday, and the view from my front window, below).  I’ve caught up with old friends and gobbled down some culture (the Matisse show at the Met, the Museum of Arts and Design, French lessons on Saturday afternoons, even an afternoon at the ballet), though not enough of either.

And at long last, I’m in sight of a closing date on the property I’m buying in East Hampton. On Friday, the house passed its inspection for an updated Certificate of Occupancy, meaning, the Town deems it safe to live in (and that the backfilling of a derelict swimming pool, which I oversaw last month, was done to their satisfaction). And this afternoon I got an email from the seller telling me he is “putting together a crew” to move his two boats and the accumulated furnishings and stuff of 30 years out… this week.

Ye gads. It’s really happening! This means that after weeks of lying on the sofa, leafing languidly through books on Japanese landscaping and ripping pages out of decorating magazines, I’ll soon be putting in actual hard labor. All too soon, perhaps. Am I ready to plunge full-tilt into cleaning, painting, gardening, renovation? It makes me want to settle back on the couch with “The Art of the Japanese Garden” and a cup of tea. I’m already reflecting nostalgically on this temporary period of being a one-home person. I haven’t missed the Long Island Expressway one bit.

Soon enough, I’ll be in the woods, at the beach, breathing country air and enjoying country silence. Meanwhile, I’m appreciating the beauties at hand, like the freestanding mansions of Victorian Flatbush, above and below, where I went earlier this week for the annual ritual meeting with my accountant.

Mostly, though, what I appreciate is my Prospect Heights pied-a-terre, below, where I’ve been cozily cocooned. Its cheery yellow walls never fail to boost my spirits, and its two south-facing windows have served my houseplant collection well.

As the days lengthen, then, onward to what’s next.

Berkshires Victoriana

JUST BACK from a few days visiting a friend in Western Massachusetts, where I was amazed at the number of Victorian villas. The area is a catalogue of 19th century styles including Second Empire and Italianate, with details like arched, porthole, and bay windows; porches, balconies, and cupolas; and all manner of decorative molding.

Sadly, these grand dames of yesteryear are often located on now-busy roads, and they mostly look like white elephants  — enormous and drafty and difficult to heat without servants to stoke the many fireplaces. Some are in sorry shape. Others, like the blue- shuttered example here, in the town of Lee, seem well-maintained.

We stopped in Lee for lunch at the Cakewalk Cafe, then checked out a couple of thrift/antique stores on the intact 19th century main street, below.

Then into nearby Lenox, where my friend had managed to dig up the one historic house in the area — of some 75 such Berkshires “cottages” — open on a mid-winter weekday: Ventfort Hall, below, a 28,000-square foot Jacobean Revival mansion with 54 rooms, designed in 1893 by the Boston architectural firm Rotch & Tilden for Sarah Morgan, sister of financier J.P., and her husband George.

Like so many unwieldy mansions of that era, it had been abandoned for some time and fallen into ruin. As recently as the 1990s, the floors were ice-covered and littered with chunks of fallen ceiling plaster. Oak wall panels were missing, and the exterior was crumbling.

Docent Marsha McDermott, above, showed us ‘before’ photos — that is, before a small group of concerned locals formed the non-profit Ventfort Hall Association and purchased the property, then raised $4million in private and public funds to restore it and open it to public view. Then she sent us off to explore, giving us carte blanche to open doors and poke around.

Being avid Downton Abbey watchers, my friend and I could well visualize the family that lived here, enjoying such amenities as indoor plumbing, electric and gas lighting, radiant heat in the basement ceiling, a burglar alarm system, internal fire hoses, copper speaking tubes in the walls, and an electric elevator. Above, the Great Hall. Newly carved American red oak panels were left unstained, below, to distinguish them from the original woodwork. Unfortunately, there are no original furnishings left in the house; they were sold off long ago.

Below, the dining room, which suffered a great deal of water damage. The Cuban mahogany ceiling was restored with new Honduran mahogany.

Below, new plasterwork recreated from molded casts of the original ceiling.

Delicate plasterwork and an onyx marble fireplace in the drawing room, below, which was used by Sarah Morgan and her daughter Caroline to entertain guests. It’s now a gift shop.

We exited onto the rear verandah, below, made of wood painted a ruddy color to match the stone facade. (If this elevation looks familiar, it’s because it was used as a set in the film The Cider House Rules.) The breeze coming off Stockbridge Bowl Lake, now obscured by trees, gave the house its name: Ventfort means “strong wind.”

Open 360 days a year, Ventfort Hall is available for weddings, receptions, dinners, parties, corporate meetings, and Victorian teas — not to mention picnicking on 12 acres of surrounding park. For more info: 413/637-3206, www.GildedAge.org