Maycroft’s Big Makeover

A yearlong intellectual exercise
In deconstruction with a bow to history

By Jennifer Landes

Carol Bates Though completely redone, the grande dame on North Haven harks back to the late 19th century; below, Maycroft prior to being gutted

(11/25/2008)    During a time in the late 19th century, grand resort houses were modeled on the best palazzos and country homes of Europe, designed with the idea of taking the best of a variety of architectural styles and reviving them as something slightly different. Then, according to James Merrell, there was Maycroft.

    The Sag Harbor architect responsible for the reinterpretation of the old estate on Ferry Road on North Haven said the house, originally built by Edward Delano in 1885 for James Herman and Mary Gertrude Aldrich, was outmoded by the time it was completed, compared with the Newport mansions to the north and east of here that served as “social signifiers for a certain class of people.”

    “In the 1870s and 1880s the ideal was back to nature,” Mr. Merrell said earlier this month. “All you needed was a cottage, not a ballroom or terraced landscapes. Victorian cottages were stuck on a meadow.” Then, the emphasis shifted to making a statement “with obscene amounts of money.”

    This did not go without notice by the house’s original proprietress, who was forward-thinking enough to have the first automobile in New York State, he said. “The owner renovated the house just years later,” adding running water and electric service as well as paneling, beam wraps, and the house’s signature turrets. “They had missed the boat, but they quickly turned it around.”

    After a yearlong intellectual exercise of deconstruction to uncover what was best about the house and bring it up to modern standards, Mr. Merrell has designed a house that he thinks is faithful to the intentions of its original owner and useful to the owner today. The architect recently won an Archi Award commendation from the Long Island chapter of the American Institute of Architects for his work.

    Maybe not the ideal of traditionalists, who point to the property’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the project instead “reinterprets not what it was originally, but something that alludes to the period that it came from, roughly,” that is, the slightly later gilded age of resort architecture, he said.

    “In many ways, it is the period we sort of think the original owner wished she had built to.”

   

Carol Bates The original fireplace area, above, and the painstaking reconstruction

While the choices facing the new ­owner, Peter D’Angelo, might have seemed fairly simple, to the architect they were more complicated than whether to tear it down or try to preserve it. After the owner made clear his intention to preserve it, Mr. Merrell said, the questions for him became “why get involved, and once you get involved, for whatever reason, how do you view history? What are you taking from history if it is not a restoration?”

    Complicating matters was the collective memory of people living on North Haven and in Sag Harbor who had enjoyed the property as a public space since it was turned over to the Episcopal Church in 1917. Nuns subsequently ran the Tuller School there.

    At first there was a concerted effort to keep intact what they could of the interior of the house, which was turned 160 degrees and moved 50 feet to take advantage of water views. The 15,000-square-foot building, weighing more than 375 tons, according to its mover, Davis Construction, is the largest structure ever moved on Long Island.

    Mr. Merrell said that as a New York architect trained in rationalist theory based on modernist ideals he did not have the built-in antipathy to history that some of his colleagues might. “I recognize that there is bad modern architecture. There are good and bad examples of all periods and styles.”

    While his work is minimal in execution, it does refer back to the vernacular of the area and to similar historical structures, whether they be a potato barn in Bridgehampton modified to house Urban Archaeology or a reinterpretation of an Italian barn that became the main house of a horse farm, also in that hamlet.

    Gradually it became clear, however, that much of what was in the house could not be rescued after 120 years, or else it needed modification to bring out the best in its design. To a casual observer, not much appears to have changed in the overall style, but much is different.

    Exterior French doors were replaced with large expanses of glass brought down to a more modest scale with small diagonal grids in the top portion and out of the way of the view.

    The chimneys needed repairs and were replaced with bricks handmade in a beehive kiln that have a natural irregularity consistent with the period. The shingles were originally red, but changed color over time. The new ones were stained a natural brown.

   

Morgan McGivern James Merrell

With all of the new elements, the question remains: Is there anything left of the old structure? Mr. Merrell’s answer is no. “We predetermined that we would end up with something of the old, but there is nothing left.”

    The recontruction moved forward with some information about the house still a mystery, and modifications had to be made as it progressed.

    “We thought more of the existing house would be savable,” he said. “We knew it would be a total gut, but thought that more elements would be saved.”

    Some of the old hardware and doors were kept, but they were “too corny” for the main living areas and were used in the attic. The mantels were saved and were brought back in after the fireboxes were modified from coal to wood-burning. The interior rooms reflect a contemporary sensibility, with fewer walls and more light.

    Mr. Merrell said he hopes that the house’s sense of mystery remains. He tried to incorporate it into some of the design elements, he said.

    “Buildings with complexity built into them tend to engage one continually, like people who are interesting as you keep getting to know them. There are layers.”