Architectural Digest (June 2005) 

“Serendipity in Southampton” 

Capturing the air of the summer house on Long Island. 

            They knew what they wanted- an easygoing house with large rooms and panoramic views of the sea- but after a year and a half, all the couple had to show for their time and money was a surly pile of sand and dirt on a Long Island bay. Belatedly, they realized that their architect was inexperienced and that, if they followed his plans, they would wind up with small bedrooms, vast closets- “The master bedroom closet was the size of a hotel,” says the wife- and mangy, begrudging views of the Atlantic. Rather than positioning their rooms to look at the ocean, the architect had given them a view straight across the bay- to the houses on the other side. This water-loving family, as aquatic as ducks, might just as well have built their house on a lake in the center of the continent. “It would have been a disaster,” says the wife. “No matter how much money we wasted, it was worth it to wait and get it right.”

            Their second architect- Peter H. Cook, from neighboring Southampton- knew immediately what was needed. Climbing to the top of that offensive pile, he looked around and exclaimed: “This is such a great view! We’ll face the house toward the ocean!” His predecessor’s plans were tossed into the nearest trash can, and planning began anew. Cook, too, was constrained by the site, two narrow acres leading down to the bay. But his solution was to angle the rooms so that they did indeed look out to the ocean. As a result, he says, the master bedroom is like the bow of a ship- “It has the feeling of floating on the water.”

            Both husband and wife are busy people- she sells Manhattan real estate; he is the president and chief executive officer of a financial services firm- and they did not want to spend any more time on their country house. They had long had an interior designer they trusted. Joseph Kremer, whose office is in Manhattan, had designed both their Park Avenue apartment and the husband’s office on Fifth Avenue. Now they also had an architect they could trust. “You design this house and tell me when it’s done,” the wife told Kremer and Cook. How many designers and architects are so lucky with their clients?

            There were, of course, guidelines. Besides an ocean view and large bedrooms the couple wanted a house that was “grand”- to use the wife’s adjective- but not fancy: a dining room that would be suitable for black-tie dinners or lobster bakes in bathing suits and living room chairs on which a Wall Street tycoon or their dog, a 16-pound Havanese, would feel equally comfortable. Most of all, they wanted a house that was fun, a place to which their son, who is now 13, could bring his friends for a good time in their media room or playroom. “I like toys,” says the husband. “We’re on this earth for a short period of time, so let’s enjoy it.” True to his word, he has filled the playroom with a jukebox, a pinball machine, an air hockey game and computer games.

            One other requirement- “I wanted a house that looked as if it had always been there,” says the wife- all but mandated the traditional Long Island Shingle Style. Cook then gave the house a gambrel roof, a roof with two slopes rather than one. “The nice thing about a gambrel, he says, “is that it gives you a lot of volume on the second floor but it doesn’t overwhelm.” To give the house the grand feeling his clients wanted, Cook, along with project manager Sean T. Mulligan and associate Donald Bouchard II, also decided on a two-story entrance hall with an extra-wide wrapping staircase. “I like staircases on which two people can walk up and down at the same time,” he says. To create a natural, easy flow from one room to another, he opened the living room to the rest of the house and made it so bright, with so many windows, that visitors are pulled into it. “It’s hard to leave that room when the sun sets,” says the wife. “It’s as if the sun is in our backyard.”

            Trained as an architect as well as an interior designer, Kremer also saw the house as a movement of rooms. “When I look at a plan, I can literally walk through a house in my mind,” he says. As he ambled through Cook’s plan, he imagined a progression of blues. That sun-drenched living room he painted a light blue, a “dusty blue,” as he calls it. For the dining room, he chose a more intense, deeper blue, and for the media room, which receives less light than any other room, he picked a much darker, even more intense blue. Blue also ascended to the master bedroom on the second floor- to a carpet, hand-painted Dutch tiles around the fireplace, to a four-poster and to patterned chairs. To the old adage that you can’t be too thin or too rich, Kremer posts a designer’s addendum: “You can’t have too much blue and white.”

            “Some rooms photograph well, but you can’t carry on a conversation in them,” says Kremer, who was careful to arrange the living room seating so that people could speak- and others could hear. For the dining room, he selected wicker chairs at the head and foot of the table were of different heights. To his way of thinking, formal, matching chairs, marching around a table in perfect order, are boring.

            After a rocky, uncertain start- the year and a half with the novice architect– the house seemed to build itself, so smoothly did the architect, designer and builder work together. “They left me out of it, which was the best part,” jokes the wife. Unlike many homeowners in the Hamptons, who can recite endless stories of the woes they suffered building their houses, the couple actually enjoyed the process. They were so happy, in fact, that their first party in their new house was for those who had taken such pride in its design and construction. But perhaps the proudest of all was the water-loving family that now lives in it. “When I walk into my bedroom, it takes my breath away,” says the wife. “Every time. 

Text by Gerald Clarke. Photography by Durston Saylor.