Barbara Macklowe has a passion for photography and says it has taken over her life. After retiring from the family’s antiques gallery, she took several trips around the world, honing her picture-taking skills along the way. Self-taught, she learned by doing. She couldn’t put down her camera during two trips to India, one in 2004 and another in 2005, she said, and it changed her “forever.”

      Before going digital, Ms. Macklowe carried up to 10 pounds of film on each trip, returning home with 6,500 undeveloped images. “I had a real connection with the people that I took images of. The children, they just won my heart.” Previously, she had most­ly photographed flowers, which she captured in close-up detail.

     She hadn’t envisioned turning her photography into a book, but, after showing some of the images from India to the head of the Papadakis publishing house, the nearly 300-page book came together in a matter of months. Released last November, “India In My Eyes” includes a foreword by Pritish Nandy, an Indian poet and writer. Passages from Rabind­ranath Tagore’s “Stray Birds” appear alongside many of the photos, some stretched across two pages.

   “The book is about the way I saw India . . . the human connection and the beauty all around us,” she said.

    Locally, the book is for sale at BookHampton, English Country Antiques, Marders, and Sylvester & Co. In New York, it’s available at Rizzoli Bookstore, the Asia Society, and the Rubin Museum. It sells for $70.

   Barbara Feldman, an East Hampton interior designer, has found her calling, and it turns out to be a composite of her previous careers. A former designer of commercial and medical interiors, a real estate agent, and a house stager, she reinvented herself not long ago after analyzing the demographics of the South Fork and realizing that a plethora of young families live here. “They need a different kind of design,” she said.

    While many young families own second homes here and “want to get out of the pool and sit on the couch” without worry, “they still want a stylish house,” she said. Her concentration now is on creating “kid and pet-friendly homes” that incorporate materials that are hypoallergenic, antimicrobial, durable, nontoxic, safe, and green. But in doing so, she said she had not compromised her aesthetics. “Otherwise the whole thing would be meaningless.”

     There was just one problem. When she was designing “very styled, high-end, V.I.P. hospital facilities,” she was all too aware that most materials that meet health requirements were “really ugly.”

    In hospitals “you have to deal with some of the unpleasantness of life,” she said. “Vomit, urine, blood, Betadine. . . . It was a challenge to make [rooms] look beautiful. . . hands were tied by unsophisticated technology at the time.” But that was the ’90s. Fast-forward to the present, and the good news is that materials have evolved.

     These days, Ms. Feldman spends up to 15 hours a week seeking products — from furniture to carpets to paints and wall coverings — that are nontoxic and can be cleaned with bleach, while also being “beachy chic.” And she has stockpiled an assortment of fabrics to fit most design palettes.    

     “Stains like red wine, mud, mustard, tomato sauce, and chocolate,” are, she said, the banes of everyday life. However, with cutting-edge fabrics, a swipe with bleach will remove an offending blot (not the color or pattern) while killing germs at the same time. “When puppies piddle you get a nice big yellow stain,” she said. “Not with this stuff.” Many of her products are also odor-resistant.

    Most of the new fabrics were primarily conceived for the hospitality industry; while attractive, they are tough. Ms. Feldman can even quote the scores they get on something called the Weezenbeck test, which measures durability by how long it takes to destroy a material. A good rating, she said, starts at 10,000. Most of the fabrics she uses score between 12,000 and 60,000, some going up to 100,000. About the only wear and tear she can’t guarantee against is cat scratching, but even that, she said, can be minimized.

    Antimicrobial properties are “built into the yarn itself,” and she provides upholstery fills that don’t carry allergens like mold or dust mites. Most are also extremely flame retardant, she said.

    Her design work is not all about materials, however. She also focuses on child safety, finding and suggesting furniture that is stable or has rounded corners, and “mechanisms that will keep them from getting into cabinets with cleaning agents or sharp objects.”

     With calls coming in from prospective clients and builders these days, Ms. Feldman is convinced she’s onto something with wide appeal. “The future has arrived,” she said.

   Last year, my brothers and I sold our family home: a little 100-year-old pink stucco house at the end of a road, surrounded by a golf course and water. Exquisite. It was a painful time whose time had come. I was ready for a little “city living,” having neighbors close by, restaurants that stayed open year round, and no pop-up shops for twerking tweens. (Sorry, East Hampton Village, but you have become dismal in winter and downright silly in summer.) I made plans to move to Sag Harbor.

    I fell in love with a house on Route 114 and moved last September. It is a beautiful old house built in 1880, with wide pumpkin pine floors, fireplaces, and the first big kitchen I have ever had the good fortune to work in. My block on 114, excuse me, Hampton Street, is as neighborly as can be. I met everyone next to me, across the street from me, and around the corner, before I had even moved in: Adrienne, Starr, Joy, Gahan, Robert, Nancy, Beatrice, and so on. Hurricane Sandy preparations were done together. Advice was proffered.

    “Don’t park your car on the street in summer. Fold down your rear-view mirror; it’ll get clipped off.” For some reason, the low speed limit close to the elementary school stretch of 114 is a magnet for moronic driving. I had no idea how moronic until one night in early December.

    I was awakened by what I was sure was an explosion within the house, or at the very least, a heavy piece of furniture filled with dishes had decided to topple over. I crept downstairs in my pajamas, sniffing the air for gas, smoke, fumes, furniture in smithereens. Nothing. I turned around to return upstairs. Then I saw headlights shining through my front window — about five feet away from my face. I’m pretty sure I immediately went into some form of shock, and I tore upstairs to bundle up in warm clothes.

    By the time I get back downstairs and open the front door, flashing red lights and a gathering of police and emergency personnel are already on the scene. They yell at me. “Don’t come through that door! Is there any other way you can exit the house?!” A car has smashed up onto the porch, crushing the foundation, toppling the pillars supporting the roof and shoving the entire structure sideways, and down. I go through the back gate and come out to see a substantial S.U.V. (natch) crushed against the front corner of my house. The driver is fine, hunky dory in fact, saved by the airbag and calmly calling his boyfriend to come and pick him up.

    He had fallen asleep at the wheel, taken out a streetlamp and  a tree before swerving into my charming, old, old, innocent, wooden house. That dude must’ve been bookin’ it!

    I basically just stood there crying while my neighbor Adrienne tried to comfort me. The police took pictures, the totaled car was towed away. The building inspector came to ensure I could safely re-enter the house for the rest of the night. Orange cones and yellow police tape were stacked and wrapped around the holy mess. I texted my friend and contractor Sal because he is a Sag Harbor volunteer fireman.  Eventually, the scene attracted a crowd. One strange fellow showed up with a small child and took pictures. To add just another soupcon of Fellini-esqueness, a deer bounded across 114, up onto the shattered, jagged chunks of porch, danced a confused little jig, and then clattered back across the highway. We all crack up, what else can you do?

    Here’s a piece of advice: When someone else’s insurance company balks at your estimate for repairs, sic your own insurance company on them, they speak the liability lingo. My peeps at Amaden Gay made mincemeat of those fellows at Geico.

    The porch was rebuilt, slowly and carefully, by Sal and Dave, the whale and spout railing duplicated beautifully, the stone foundation stronger than ever. Terry, the painter, told me stories of having coming to my house long ago, to play with the Earley boys. He had an idea. He described the oldest house in Bridgehampton. “It’s gray and white like yours, but it has this unique green door. I think it would look beautiful on your new porch.”

    On the night of the accident, long after the flashing lights and policemen and tow trucks and moronic driver and curious neighbors were gone, Sal knocked on the door. After giving me a hug he quoted John Irving’s T.S. Garp. “It’s been pre-disastered! You’re safe now!”

    So when you pass the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home (that oughta slow you down!) and the elementary school, please drive carefully. And take a second to admire the sweet little house with the cool green door. My mantra has become “it’s pre-disastered. We’re going to be safe here.”

    The house is purple. Inside and out: painted cedar planks on the exterior and tongue-in-groove millwork in the interior. The overarching aesthetic is startling given the setting in tall white-pine woods in East Hampton’s Northwest — a setting that prompted the modernist architect Don Chappell to suggest vibrant color for dramatic contrast. At least that’s how it all used to be. Today, if you take a careful look you will find a recent addition that has a calming effect.

   Sandra Thorn, now a retired attorney who had the house built in the 1980s, recalls the architect’s insistence. “It needs to be purple,” he said.

   “Are you crazy? I spend all day wearing black,” was her response. But she decided to go along with it anyway.

    “I had seen Don’s houses and they were all white and gray, which is what I thought I’d get,” she said. “It’s taken me 30 years to get used to it.” Thirty years — and some new wings along the way.

   At first, Ms. Thorn would refer to the color as periwinkle, but others didn’t recognize that nuance. When a grandson said the house was purple, his dad shushed him so she wouldn’t hear it. Eventually she faced the facts. Even the fuel deliveryman identified the house as purple on receipts.

    Not only did Mr. Chappell dictate the color, he chose the furnishings. “I’m not interested in interior design,” Ms. Thorn said, explaining that she entrusted it to him. He gave her three choices for each piece, from sofa to side tables to a handsome coral and lavender built-in seat.

    The only feature of the living room he didn’t choose was an Oriental rug. “He’d kill me if he saw it,” she told a recent visitor.

    In the ’90s, about the time Ms. Thorn and Mike Flynn, a lawyer who is now also retired, were married, they built the first of two additions, a large kitchen and pantry. The architect Kenton Van Boer took over after Mr. Chappell moved to Florida. (He died unexpectedly at the age of 55.)

     The addition connects with the main house seamlessly, helped by similar cabinetry, in this case white-painted maple.

Despite some neutral hues — the ceiling is rough-hewn natural cedar — strong color is still a reigning motif. Cupboard doors open to reveal a burst of bright orange shelving.

    The formidable pantry contains dovetailed cabinets built by Mr. Flynn, who humbly calls himself a “down in the basement woodworker.” His handiwork is evident throughout the house, from a tricked out dressing room to a simple bench.

In 2005 the couple felt the need for another addition. This time they built an airy refuge that became the principal living area. It wasn’t the color purple that drove them out of the original house, but the cube-like living room, which reflects a lovely light in summer yet becomes cavernous in winter. As they began to spend more and more time in East Hampton, they wanted space that was light but cozy year round.

    When planning this addition, Mr. Van Boer suggested they choose between adhering to the aesthetic of the purple house or going with something totally different. Opting for the latter, they chose an elliptical mini house with two almost round rooms and an exterior framed in copper. The contrast is distinctive.  

    Unlike the main house, with the color purple inside and out, the copper siding doesn’t flow indoors. There are white walls, blond bamboo floors, and lots of butterscotch basswood on a barreled, or curved, ceiling as well as on pocket doors and baseboards. And lots of skylights.

     The entrance leads directly to a TV room with his and her swivel lounge chairs and a floor-to-ceiling bay window. “The whole purpose of the addition was this room,” Mr. Flynn said. A wood-burning stove sits in a small alcove. Visible outside the window, and framing its top, is a copper overhang that blocks out harsh summer sun and prevents rain from coming in when the windows are open. It apparently was the couple’s only contribution to the design.

   The master bedroom, a minimalist, anti-purple room with whites and beiges and ethereal curtains that drift in the breeze, is in this addition. Its windows overlook the woods, and the couple often wake up to see browsing deer.

   Despite the new look, brilliant color has definitely infiltrated Ms. Thorn’s world. Friends have noticed a decided trend — one she had not noticed herself — as she gradually replaced much of her black wardrobe with lavenders, fuschias, and other shades of purple.

 Durell Godfrey

The house opens to an outside eating space and pool.

 Durell Godfrey

The cube-like living room is sparsely furnished.

 Durell GodfreyThe copper panels of the addition were a challenge to install.

 Durell Godfrey

In the dining room, a 10-foot-long painting of a bluefin tuna by the Connecticut artist James Prosek is flecked with shades of purple.  In the copper addition, a wood stove is tucked into its own alcove. An open stairway leads from the living room to upstairs bedrooms.

    In a grove of cedars in the woods of Springs, Marcia Previti and Peter Gumpel have taken architecture into an unexpected, although appropriate, realm: the outdoors.

    The couple, who are architects, have lived in a “raised ranch, split-level, postmodern bungalow” (in their words) for 22 years. In the course of those two-plus decades, they have taken the art and science of constructing buildings and, one could say, turned it inside out, creating a series of outdoor “rooms” filled with surprise.

    “We’re doers,” Ms. Previti said as she showed a recent visitor around. “We like to work and create. We like the outdoors, so we were always outside tending to the grove. It’s a nice space, now what are we going to do with it? We make a room out of it, for a purpose. It developed one to the next.”

    Ms. Previti and Mr. Gumpel had separate architectural practices in New York. She concentrated on corporate interiors and residences but gave it up about five years ago, although she continues to work under her husband’s umbrella, PMG Architects.

 Durell Godfrey

A hammock crosses the path from the Shade Garden to the Fire Pit Room.”

    The couple first came to East Hampton in 1981 as co-owners of a boat docked at the marina at Duck Creek off Three Hile Harbor. Five years later, they went in on a house at Lion Head in Springs with another couple, renovated it, and began alternating their summer weekends between land and sea. After their son was born, however, they decided it was time to build their own house.

    “Being architects, we decided jointly that we didn’t want to do a traditional East End garden with lawns and selective planting,” Mr. Gumpel said. “The natural instinct was to take advantage of the environment that we had by doing clearings, spotting rooms — outdoor rooms — that had different character to them.”

`    The overall garden, which has been on the Garden Conservancy’s “open days” tours and is opened occasionally for benefit performances, now has some nine distinct spaces, not to mention a wisteria arbor and a greenhouse, and each has a given name. The grounds and plantings occurred with no articulated master plan. “It’s not as if there’s a target, and we’re 90 percent there. It’s an evolving, iterative process,” Mr. Gumpel said.

    The couple’s son was 2 when they moved into the house, Ms. Previti said, “so we wanted a piece of lawn. . . . We limited it to that, put up posts, and called it the Games Lawn.” But it was a birthday party for Ms. Previti shortly after they took up residence that was the real genesis of the garden.

 Durell Godfrey

Outdoor lighting makes the Shade Garden cozy in the evening.”

     “I said, ‘If you have to bring something, bring me a plant.’ People did. Twenty-two years later, I know a little more about plants, and can put things in a place where they should be, and know I’m going to get a bloom cycle through the season.” Today the grounds are filled with flowers: foxgloves, daylillies, peonies, irises, nepeta, gooseneck and purple loosetrife, lespedeza, crepe myrtle, and many, many more.

     The Sun Garden came next. “I got the stones, some dirt, started raking these forms, and ended up with an area in the middle. I knew that some feature should be here. We went to Agway, and they had this fountain. That became a real feature,” Ms. Previti said.

    Rhodo Walk, an S-shaped path amid the cedars and rhododendrons on one side of the house, leads to a Treehouse, high above the ground, which is even appropriate as an adult retreat.

    What was literally glaring in its absence, Ms. Previti said, was shade. The first rooms had “hot, searing sun all the time.

    There was no escape from it. Peter cleared an area, and we realized that would be a nice shady nook. We developed that room, and it became the Shade Garden.”

    Vacations to Caribbean resorts inspired a Ping-Pong Pavilion, a tent-covered space with table tennis, seating, and lights for nighttime play. “When we have parties, friends come out here and play. It’s a lot of fun,” Ms. Previti said. Throughout the property, sculpture reflects and complements the surroundings. Red dragons are in the trees at Pop’s Garden.

 Durell Godfrey

Beams under the tree house, above the Rhodo Walk, have whimsical ends. Willow and grapevine spheres are decorative.”

    A traditional space on the property is a garage with a studio above it, accessed by a circular staircase. The wisteria arbor is at one side. “The house is very small, and we’re a creative family, always doing projects, so we needed a project room,” Ms. Previti said. Another seating area, beneath a pergola, is adjacent, at the far end of the swimming pool.

    Although active as an architect — Mr. Gumpel was responsible for everything within the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago and has designed houses on the South Fork for Ian Schrager, among others, for example — he also does watercolors. Portraits and paintings of seascapes, landscapes, and some of the couple’s travel destinations, particularly India and Nepal, cover the studio walls; others are in the house.

 Peter Gumpel

A Kimberly fern is on a pedestal in the Fire Pit Room.”

    Finally, deer fencing was moved to free up space for a Fire-Pit Room. Inspired by visits to the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, Ms. Previti asked herself why they shouldn’t have one. Lighting makes it a cozy nighttime environment, and it is perfect in autumn, she said.

    They also have walking paths through an adjacent wooded area. “It was really dense, and we couldn’t use it. . . . It took several years to clear and connect the deer paths,” Ms. Previti said. Now you can just about circumnavigate the property, resting perhaps in the hammock that crosses one of the paths or stopping at the pergola.

    “It’s the idea . . . of creating a journey, of flowing from space to space,” Ms. Previti said.

 Durell Godfrey

Aganthus in two pots frame the Games Lawn.”

 Durell Godfrey

Like other sculptures, the couple made the red dragons that guard Pop’s Garden.”

The seamless integration of house and garden with the landscape is the ideal, even the Holy Grail, of garden and landscape design. Here on the East End a few jewels meet the challenge.

    Recently, I was introduced to a place on the bay in Springs that meets that ideal. Thanks to the Cultural Landscape Foundation, one of a series of garden dialogues throughout the country was held at the home of Bob and Margo Alexander in which Thomas Balsley, a prominent landscape architect who helped create the Alexanders’ garden, spoke about the process.

    The couple began planning their house and thinking about the grounds 23 years ago and met Mr. Balsley early on. The landscape-garden is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and appears as fresh and inspirational today as it must have 20 years ago. Or perhaps the world is only now catching up. 

 Durell Godfrey

A reclaimed meadow is framed by a wisteria-covered stone folly.”

    East Hampton Town zoning restrictions were a blessing in disguise. The house could not be built on the crest of the dunes overlooking Gardiner’s Bay. Rather, it is nestled down into the rear of the dunes. The land slopes away from the house with the natural landscape dovetailing with the man-made, as Mr. Balsley described it.

    The impact and power of an abandoned hay field overgrown with Virginia cedars to the south was quickly seized upon. Today the field is a meadow that shimmers with rippling grasses almost as far as the eye can see, the edges softened and surrounded by woodland. To the uninitiated the expanse looks untouched by human hands. The reality is that almost as much was spent restoring the field as was invested in the rest of the landscape. Thousands of cedars were hand dug for removal and native grasses were sown.

    On a sunny day in June, alternating waves of amber and yellow grasses transform the space to a higher realm. A few native trees remain as solitary architectural shapes or clusters in strategic areas. The result is one that nature itself would be pleased to claim. The meadow is mowed once a year in autumn and it is given a good weeding in early spring. Michael Blake, who has gardened there since the beginning, is in charge.

    The transitional area between house and meadow is given to sweeps of smoky blue and purple perennials that resist deer predation. Close to the house, a large area is planted with a variety of lavenders, and across a grass path, two forms of catmint are in bloom, to be followed by Russian sage. The catmint vignette is worthy of emulation: It combines masses of the dwarf Nepeta x faassenii Blue Wonder with the taller N. Walker’s Low. They sway in the breezes, echoing the grasses in the meadow beyond.

    The area is overrun by deer. The Alexanders’ philosophy is if the deer eat it, try something else. In this environment, the visitor is totally unaware of compromises, however.

 Durell Godfrey

Chairs are the only structures on the dunes.”

    The house’s long, rectangular, glass-walled living and dining space floats on a steel bridge above the ground.  It appears nearly transparent and is connected by three supporting structures, or towers. Inside the largest one, to the north, you see the water view, and turning south, the meadow. Looking back toward the house from the meadow you see the dunes through the space beneath the living area. From the dunes through a transitional mass of bayberries and rugosa roses, you can look back at the swimming pool and the meadow.

    The Alexanders did not want a fence around the swimming pool to interfere with the integrated landscape or the views. The solution to the south was fairly easy: The house is built on a platform, or terrace, running perpendicular to it with a swimming pool in the center. The grade was manipulated so the terrace is edged with a fieldstone sitting wall, the required four feet above the ground level and the pool.

    At the north end of the terrace, under the bridge, a sinuous lily pond, which may resonant as a moat, was dug at the base of the dunes. The distance from the bottom of the pond to the terrace is the necessary four feet.

    A narrow planting bed runs nearly the length of the eastern wall of the terrace. This year it is given to a variety of salad greens, ruby chard, and colorful annuals. Herbs grow in containers in another sunny area on the terrace. Nothing can or ought even to try to compete with the drama of the meadow, so a few simple containers are clustered in the southwest by the pool house.

 Durell Godfrey

”

    This is a family with children and grandchildren so a circular area of lawn was located to the east of the house. Not taking themselves too seriously, a light touch was added on the far side of the lawn, a folly of a stone ruin, echoing a stone pool house tower. The arched doorway of the wisteria-covered folly frames views of the blue nepeta and grasses in one direction, and in the other of a partially shaded, deep border of purple salvias and angelonias with golden Hakkone grass to the rear. You also can look through the arch toward the meadow.

    In our highly urbanized society and in a highly developed community where only vestiges remain of East Hampton’s rural landscape, the Alexanders and Thomas Balsley have indeed created a vision of paradise by walking lightly on the land.

 Durell Godfrey

A sinuous lily pond, at left, nothing can or ought to compete with the drama of the meadow, which stretches as far as the eye can see, middle. At right, the living area is above the pool and its windows are angled so that they reflect the landscape.”

 Abby Jane Brody

You can see the dunes from poolside.”

 Durell Godfrey

The dune-side of the house.”

   Cape Advisors flew in the metropolitan press by seaplane last Thursday and welcomed reporters from the local media as well to a penthouse cocktail party at the Bulova Watchcase Factory condominiums. After years of speculation about the project, those with the golden ticket, like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” got a glimpse inside the model penthouse and a view from the rooftop.

    “I’m proud of what you see here,” said Nick Racanelli, who represented the third generation of his family’s construction company along with a team of builders, architects, designers, and developers. He grew up visiting the East End, he said, and always thought the old factory building was an eyesore. He “jumped at the opportunity” to take on its restoration, he said.

    The building was in major disrepair, worse even than the team thought, and it took six months just to stabilize it. But “things will now soar,” the developer promised. Expectations are high for construction to be finished this time next year.

    The sales office opened for business on Friday, though 19 contracts are already out or signed on units in the factory building. There are over 900 names on the waiting list, principals told the press. Factory lofts and bungalows will range from just under $1 million to $2.7 million, and penthouses from $3 million to $10.2 million. Three to six-bedroom town houses start at $3.5 million and go up to $6.5 million

    After several short speeches, newspaper reporters from across the state put on hard hats and joined writers and editors of architectural magazines and lifestyle glossies to be escorted through the unfinished factory. A climb up a few flights of stairs ended with entry into a long, airy, high-ceilinged corridor lined with windows.

    The visitors took self-guided tours of impressive bedrooms, bathrooms, and walk-in closets before ending up at the open-floor-planned kitchen and living room of the loft penthouse suite. Workers were visible all over the place, as  were water views through demolished or collapsed walls, blasted windows, and metal scaffolding.    

    Up on the rooftop, the press was treated to an elaborate lunch, along with a breathtaking view of Shelter Island Sound.

    Steven Gambrel, an interior designer and Sag Harbor resident, explained details. The mechanical systems, he said, were placed beneath a raised floor, which also made the windows closer to eye level. Mr. Gambrel designed the custom oak cabinetry, marble countertops, brick backsplash, stainless steel refrigerators, gas stove ranges, and dishwashers in the kitchen.

    The Bulova property, a Superfund site after the factory closed in the late 1960s, will include bungalows designed to resemble the small historic houses nearby, said Craig Wood, who took on the project about seven years ago with Curtis Bashaw, his partner. Above them will be town houses with three levels and an option for an elevator. Mr. Wood said those units will look like “little houses with picket fences.”

    Green building practices include the repurposing of 20,000 original bricks to use in the factory building. Eighty thousand pounds of walnut shells were used to blast paint from the historic beams. Some original beams were saved; others were sourced from old bridge trestles in Alabama and southern Virginia. Green roof technology includes landscaping with all-season native plants. Almost all of the condominiums offer private outdoor space — either a garden, balcony, or rooftop terrace.

    An old vault that once held precious metals used in watchcases will now serve as a wine bar within a luxurious lobby lounge. Three elevators will provide access to the lofts above. Amenities will include a doorman and a shuttle that will take residents to the beach and around town in the summers. Parking will not be an issue, with a spot or private garage designated for every residence, all concealed underground.

    Residents will have their own year-round heated outdoor pool, with chairs, towels, and beverage service in the summer, as well as a fitness room, a yoga-aerobics studio, locker rooms with sauna and steam, a spa treatment room, and a large lounge with fireplace and catering kitchen for private parties.

    “We have something that no one else has,” said James Lansill of Corcoran Sunshine, the real estate agent selected to market the property. Calling an investment in a unit a “unique historic opportunity,” he stressed that no two floor plans are alike. The units “will be collectors’ items,” he said.

    After a sojourn in Southampton last year, the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons’ garden tour, now in its 27th year, returns to East Hampton on June 15. The tour features six private gardens, complimentary admission to the Much Ado About Madoo garden market sale in Sagaponack, and a separate cocktail reception.

    Highlights include the gardens of two landscape designers, Craig James Socia’s Craigmoor property on Accabonac Road and that of Michael Derrig and his wife, Dwyer, on Buell Lane Extension.

    The Derrigs’ residence will also be the site for free refreshments during the tour hours, which are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine. Among the other properties are those of Barrie Berg and Antonio Munoz, Alexandra Munroe and Robert Rosenkranz, Peter Wilson and Scott Sanders, and Jan and Randy Slifka.

    The tour is self-guided, and ticketholders can see the gardens in any order. A cocktail reception immediately follows, from 4 to 6 p.m., at the iconic home of Mary Jane and Charles Brock in the Village of East Hampton. Barbara Slifka and Mark Fichandler are heading up this year’s event.

    There are properties in Georgica, in the woods, off the ocean, and on the beach itself. Many of the gardens incorporate formal, more casual, and organic sections. Specimen trees, lily ponds, stacked stone walls, water features, and unique pool, hot tub, and outdoor shower designs are some of the inspirations awaiting.

    Tickets for the tour cost $75 each and can be purchased through ARF by phone or on its Web site, arfhamptons.org. They can also be had in person at the adoption center at 91 Daniel’s Hole Road in East Hampton, the organization’s thrift shop on Montauk Highway in Sagaponack, and at the following garden centers: Lynch’s and Mecox Gardens in Southampton, East Hampton Gardens, Bayberry in Amagansett, and the Sag Harbor Florist.

    Tickets for the tour and cocktail reception cost $175 and must be purchased in advance by phone, online, or at ARF’s adoption center. All proceeds from the tour benefit ARF.   

    The Madoo Conservancy is celebrating its 20th birthday with a two-day gardening event that will combine socializing, shopping, and education all in the verdant and captivating environment of Robert Dash’s home and public garden in Sagaponack.

    The event kicks off with a cocktail party tomorrow from 6 to 9 p.m. on the back lawn overlooking the Foster family’s farm fields. It will offer Wolffer Estate wines, special “Madoo cocktails” made with Hendrick’s gin, and hors d’oeuvres by Gorgen Tiden, an award-winning Swedish chef. A silent auction and a live one conducted by Jamie Niven will feature garden-related objects of desire, from the prized chicken manure fiercely fought over every year to a pair of trips to Sweden.

    On Saturday, a garden market will have rare and unusual plants and garden tools and accessories. Vendors include Seibert & Rice, Hunter Boot U.S.A., Haven’s Kitchen, Joy Newton, the New General Store, and Madison James. They will donate 10 percent of their sales that day to Madoo. There will be activities for children throughout the day as well.

    During the day there will be classes and workshops on flower arranging, rose cultivation, tree management, cooking, and, much in the spirit of Madoo, mixology from the garden. A lunchtime lecture and book signing with Mac Griswold at noon will focus on the history of Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, the topic of her forthcoming book, “The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island.”

    A full schedule and information about reservations are available at Madoo.org. Space is limited and advance purchase has been recommended.

   One person’s trash is another’s treasure was Bryan and Michele Gosman’s mantra as they assembled the pieces of what is now their dream house.

    On a cul-de-sac called Beach Hollow Court, nestled next to a reserve in Montauk, the land was once part of a 25-acre estate with a storied past. It was known as the Jackson estate, for the artist Elbert McGran Jackson, and was quite a showplace. Originally laid out by Andrew J. Thomas, an architect, he had “a main house, a greenhouse, and a watchtower,” Ms. Gosman said last week. And there was more.

    Photographs at the Montauk Library taken in the 1920s show llamas and peacocks roaming the grounds and other animals in a private zoo. By the end of the 1950s, the buildings had fallen into disrepair. The land was subdivided into 15 lots in 1988, with more than half the acreage remaining in open space.

    The Gosmans, who have been together for 18 years, fell in love with the place and bought one of the sites in 2003. It would be almost 10 years — and lots of do-it-yourself effort — before the house was finished.

    They had already built one house, on the Old Montauk Highway in 1999, sold it, and moved into a cottage on Sheperd’s Neck, which they rented at first and then bought. Its cost put construction of the Beech Hollow Court house on hold. Nevertheless, they began designing it themselves, and literally putting the pieces for it in place.   

    “This guy had these beams and was looking to get rid of them. I knew they were long-leaf yellow pine,” Mr. Gosman, who is the wholesale manager in the family’s fish empire, explained last week, adding that this particular strain of pine is almost as hard as oak. “When the guy told me he had 200 old beams, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go get them in a pickup truck.’ ” Their use began to take shape in his mind.

    The beams, stored in Brooklyn, had come out of an old Patchogue lace mill. When Mr. Gosman showed up, he realized a pickup wouldn’t do. “Each beam weighs 200 to 300 pounds apiece,” he said. “You need a tractor-trailer.”

    Transporting them wasn’t the only problem: Every inch of beam had to be gone over with a metal detector to remove the nails. Mr. Gosman took the lumber to a mill in Connecticut where it was cut into tongue-and-groove flooring. He had a 40-foot container brought to Beach Hollow Court and loaded the wood into it.

    “That was 10 years ago,” he said.

    “The floors were hard pine. I wanted to do the beams in hard pine. I didn’t have any more left, so I bought them from a company in Springfield, Mass.” These beams, which are about 10-by-12 inches around, form the exposed skeleton of the A-shaped ceiling, which visually dominates the 1,250-square-foot open living area of the L-shaped structure. Cross beams hold it all together. “They act as collar ties,” Mr. Gosman said.

     The halls of the house have wooden walls and terra-cotta flooring, which were other finds. “The wood in the hallway is old cypress from a former distillery in Brooklyn. They had 25,000-gallon vats for sherry from the early 1900s,” he said. The owner of the building wanted to get rid of the wood to make way for a renovation. “I did the work myself. I bought a planer and a tongue-and-groove machine.” The clay-tile flooring, originally from France, had once been sub-roofing.   

    The exterior required choices to be made. The couple didn’t want shingles. “Too traditional,” Ms. Gosman said. Instead, the exterior wood is cedar. “All the outside siding and roofing I got from a company in British Columbia,” Mr. Gosman said. “I had it all pre-dipped in bleaching oil.”

    While he was gathering the materials for the structure, Ms. Gosman, who is a sales associate with Martha Greene Real Estate in Montauk, was gathering furnishings and hardware.

    She said she was an early eBay junkie, and started buying things on the site in the late 1990s. “There were some losses,” she said, laughing. “It was great. You’d order something online, and it would just show up at your house.” Her initial yen was for carpets, but they are nowhere to be seen today. “Well,” she said, “three dogs later, little is left of those early rugs.”

    “We were building a modern house, but I didn’t want all modern furniture,” she said. Instead, she assembled an eclectic mix of mid-century modern and early 20th century pieces along with a few antiques.

    One of her coups was a brass ceiling fixture in a Sputnik starburst pattern. About the size of the first space satellite, which was launched by the Russians, the fixture dates from about 1960. She said you could find one on eBay now for upward of $1,600. Her cost was $425. The cast-iron firedogs for the fireplace were another find. So, too. was the Roche Bobois couch, which came from Craigslist for pennies on the dollar.

    The couple were constantly revising their plans to fit the pieces they accumulated. They drew in pencil, ready to revise at a moment’s notice. One of those moments came when Mr. Gosman bought a stove on eBay.

    “He didn’t know much about eBay,” Ms. Gosman said. He had placed a bid on a two-oven Bluepoint stove. A week later, Ms. Gosman noticed an e-mail from eBay. “Congratulations, you are the winner of a Bluepoint Five Foot Stove,” it read.  

    “We hadn’t designed for a five-foot stove,” Ms. Gosman explained. Pencils out, plans were changed. They swung the refrigerator around the corner, into the pantry, creating an open area around the stove, with a 4-by-9-foot island for friends and family to gather at while the couple cook. The top of the island was paid for in an unusual form of coinage.

    Mr. Gosman had walked into a lumber mill. “They’d just cut down an old walnut tree from somebody’s yard. I traded a few lobsters for the tree itself. They cut it for me into three-inch stock, and I let it air-dry for about a year.” Now they set their plates on a walnut top.   

    In 2011, the couple sold the house at Shepard’s Neck. They were ready for the big plunge. Temporarily homeless, they moved in with Mr. Gosman’s mother, Marjorie Gosman. They took their plans to a draftsman, who turned them into working blueprints. Construction began on their dream house at the end of that year.

    Ever flexible, they made changes on the fly. When their mason was putting in the fireplace, he suggested another on the exterior wall. It made sense to the Gosmans, and is now the centerpiece of their patio. Similarly, when the stairs were being built, the builder suggested enclosing them, something he’d seen in the Stanford White houses on the Montauk bluffs.   

    Positioning the house on the property presented a challenge. Normally, Ms. Gosman said, you’d want to maximize exposure to the sun, perhaps placing the house to catch the sunrise. In this case, though, they would look out at Montauk’s huge water tower in the distance. The tower is a sterile structure that looks like a huge rocket, perhaps about to launch the cherished Sputnik fixture back into space. So they changed the position of the house.    

    The old wood throughout the house gives it a warm feeling. Otherwise, the interior is spare, which highlights Ms. Gosman’s finds. Spare, that is, everywhere except in their son’s, Richard’s, room, which has the chaotic look of most 8-year-old boys’ rooms.

    Now, Ms. Gosman said, they will take their time, allowing their new surroundings to soak in. She wants to get a feel for the house over a couple of years before making any more changes. The pencils have been put away — for now.

 Durell Godfrey

Open to new ideas during years of planning, Bryan and Michelle Gosman said yes when a contractor suggested an outdoor fireplace. ”

 Durell Godfrey

The master bedroom gets western light.”

 Durell Godfrey

The 1,250-square-foot open living area from another perspective. ”

 Durell Godfrey

At left,Dixie Cup, one of the couple’s three dogs, stands guard between the patio and main living area. Right,The walls of the hall are cypress from antique sherry casks, the Sputnik chandelier was an eBay find, and the clay tiles are from France. ”

 Durell Godfrey

At left, a 10-foot-long monastery table is used for dining. The chairs, by the Danish firm Hay, were designed by Hee Welling. Right,Cast-iron German shepherd firedogs are antiques, too. ”