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Habitat

Garden of Tony Ingrao & Randy Kemper LongHouse and Lectures

LongHouse Award

    The annual LongHouse Reserve Landscape Award will be presented on Sept. 17 to a firm of Washington, D.C., landscape architects whose low-maintenance blend of indigenous and cultivated elements is well represented in East Hampton. Oehme, van Sweden & Associates, the designers of several important gardens here, will be honored at a lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Sep 8, 2011
The view may be toward Portugal, but the property bespeaks of comfort. An Extraordinary Haven by the Sea

    A quiet house on the Montauk bluffs is at once a testament to the architecture of East Hampton and the wildness of the moors.

    Built in 1980 by the renowned photographer Richard Avedon, who died in 2004, the house recently underwent painstaking renovation but remains devoid of the porches, patios, and porticos that typify so many second homes.

Sep 1, 2011
A sculpture of blue-glass pebbles by Maya Lyn is a centerpiece of Edwina von Gal’s garden, featured in Guild Hall’s Garden as Art tour on Saturday. Garden Tour, Party for Guild Hall

    Guild Hall will present its annual Garden as Art tour on Saturday. Five gardens in the East Hampton area, each with “a profound aesthetic that celebrates the topography, climate, and light” of the South Fork, according to the cultural center, will be open to visitors.

    The event begins at 9:30 a.m. with breakfast and an illustrated lecture by the author and garden designer Jack de Lashmet on his new book, “Hamptons Gardens.” He will sign books after the talk, with the tour immediately following at noon.

Aug 25, 2011
Juxtaposed “frames” create privacy and intrigue at this modernist Lion’s Head house. A Modernist House on Gardiner’s Bay

    The geometric planes of a sleek new house on a bluff overlooking Gardiner’s Bay at Lion’s Head make it at once solemn and serene.

Joseph and Herbert Shalant, who are brothers, were catalysts for the modernist design, after a house on the property that had been in the family for 32 years was destroyed by fire.

Aug 18, 2011
Wisteria does not begin to flower profusely until it has expanded to the space allotted to it. Romanticism vs. Reality

    Wisteria in flower evokes the most romantic garden fantasies. Monet planted it famously above a Japanese bridge in his water garden at Giverny, and of course painted it.

    You have to read the fine print to discover that while the vines he planted are still thriving, they literally tore down their supports. The reality is wisteria is high maintenance, very high maintenance, and 99.5 percent of us don’t have the know-how or resources to keep it under control and flowering, say, as in a Monet painting.

Aug 10, 2011
Star Gardener: Native Plant Garden Redux

    The milkweed and butterfly weed in shades of pink, yellow, and orange have begun their dazzling annual two-month magic show at the Mimi Meehan Native Plant Garden, between Clinton Academy and The East Hampton Star on Main Street.

    From the trilliums and other woodland plants of early spring to the asters, goldenrod, scarlet-streaked switch grass, and fragrant yellow witch hazel flowers in the autumn, there is color, texture, and interest in the garden for at least eight months of the year. But this small backyard town garden is at its flamboyant best at high summer.

Jun 29, 2011
Visiting a 19th-Century House That Reconciles Old and New

    In 1980, two young hippies made their way east from Greenwich Village and bought a small house in Amagansett with an old Harley parked in the front hall. Every weekend for 31 years, this was Robert Strada and Michelle Murphy’s home away from home until 11 years ago when they became full-time residents and fulfilled a dream.

Jun 29, 2011
The house was extended to the rear, and the attic was removed to allow the second-floor master bedroom to soar behind double-height windows. A 17th-Century House Meets the 21st Century

Don and Kathy Ashby first saw the house at 177 Main Street in East Hampton in the spring of 2012 as prospective buyers of what they might find at a tag sale. Mr. Ashby, a fashion photographer, collects books and photographs, and the house, which has been known as Congress Hall for more than a century, had been vacant for about two years after the death of its last owner.



At the time, the couple were living in a house they had renovated seven years earlier on Bluff Road in Amagansett.

Through a gate from an old Chinese castle on a 20-acre wooded property in East Hampton, a marsh boat can be seen on the shore of a koi pond. The homeowner likes to let structures age and develop a patina. A Collector’s Wonderland



Collectors usually start small before letting loose their acquisitiveness. In an extreme example, one might begin with brick-size viewing stones — Japanese suiseki — that can look like tiny mountain ranges, perhaps paired with bonsai to make miniature landscapes, before moving on to larger stones, big enough to sit on, amid raked sand.

The south side of Don Lenzer and Bettina Volz’s house in Amagansett lets in the light, below. Above, the north side shows few windows but classic modernism. A Reno Becomes a Redo

When Don Lenzer and Bettina Volz set out to renovate their aging quasi-saltbox in the almost rain forest-dense Amagansett woods north of Montauk Highway, a search led them across the country to a completely different landscape, the desert inferno of Phoenix, and a company called ASUL, which stands for Adaptable System for Universal Living.

Climbing roses almost conceal the main house, left, and the guesthouse. A Rose-Covered, Rambling Original

The house shared by Liz Robbins, a well-known Washington lobbyist, and her husband, Doug Johnson, a former news anchor for WABC-TV, reveals itself gradually. Though in the estate area of the Village of East Hampton, it isn’t visible from the street, hidden not by manicured hedges but by a profusion of shrubbery and trees. A short gravel drive leads to an inauspicious parking area. The front door is all but hidden by climbing roses, which cover the shingled facade and were in bloom on a recent visit.

Audacious curves and shapes characterize many of the ceramic pieces. Americana of the Ceramic Kind

    Tucked away in East Hampton’s Georgica Estates condominium community, a light, bright, and airy house is aglow with the vivid colors of a formidable collection of midcentury American ceramics.



    For Max Pine and Lois Mander, who bought their house in 2003, the joy is in the objects themselves rather than their historic or monetary value.

A sunken courtyard off the lower level and cantilevered overhangs off the library and master bedroom, add outdoor living space. An Angular, Experimental, Artful Redo in Wainscott

An addition to a Wainscott house gave one architect the challenge of extending another's Modernist barn.

This North Haven house, on “Sayre’s Lot,” is still in the family. Ancestors Abide in a 19th-Century House

Every nook and cranny in Ann Sutphen's North Haven house is filled with history, although like most old houses, it has been revamped and added to over the decades. She is either the sixth generation of her family to live on what was once known as “Sayre’s Lot,” or the eighth, depending on how you look at it.

Every room in the 1,250-square-foot house David Berridge designed for his family on the coast of New Zealand has an ocean view. Architecture Informed by the World

After reading a real estate article in The New York Times last winter titled “Hamptons House: Make Mine New” on the increasing trend toward teardowns and the voracious demand for new construction on the South Fork, David Berridge was so incensed that he drafted a 350-word screed to local brokers, suggesting what he called a “more enlightened approach to our changing landscape.”



“I do not have an objection to new, so much as the lack of critical thinking in the type and size of house being built and the dismissive view that it is okay to just keep knocking down the old a

The cast concrete legs of Nico Yektai’s massive Bench #8 have intricate detailing. Gestural wood components make the bench, which is designed for the outdoors, unique. Art and Craft That Flaunts Convention

Deep in the woods near Crooked Pond in Sag Harbor, where he lives and works, Nico Yektai took a break recently to consider what had given rise to his creative bent. “The idea that furniture could be just like sculpture, or painting, seemed very natural to me,” the artist-craftsman said. He referred again and again to the towering influence of his father, the Abstract Expressionist Manoucher Yektai.



Mr. Yektai works primarily in wood, which was leaned against or stacked amid power tools and work tables, and uses concrete, too.

At Home in a 19th-Century Sagaponack Barn





While much grander houses have sprung up around it in the 53 years since Tinka and the late Bud Topping transformed an 1811 barn in Sagaponack into a family home, none of them speak as much to place and history.



Mr. Topping’s family roots in Sagaponack stretch back to the 17th century, and the house is on family land where he grew up farming potatoes with his father.



“I used to see this road and say, that is the most beautiful road,” Ms. Topping recalled late last month.

The architect is seen on the stadium steps at the back of the house, which looks out on the garden. At Home in East Hampton



The dean of Yale University’s School of Architecture lives on a well-traveled road north of the highway in East Hampton, next door to a construction site where, after his attempt to buy the lot fell through, a nondescript house is going up.

His own house, still modest at about 2,000 square feet after extensive renovations, began life as a run-of-the-mill ranch. “I bought a three-room house at a fiscally deprived time, in 1978,” he said. “It was a nothing house. I kept thinking, this will be a halfway moment and then I’ll move on.

The house offers long views toward the ocean from the second floor living areas and the third floor office and roof deck. Below, James Merrell pauses during a recent visit. Beyond Modern and Traditional

Even years later, James Merrell likes nothing more than returning to the houses he designed.

Stepping inside a Sagaponack oceanfront house one recent afternoon, Mr. Merrell, its architect, didn’t focus on anything he might have done differently. Rather, he thought back to the time when the glass-and-granite house was taking shape, and even farther, to when it was only lines scratched on a piece of paper. He also thought about the neccessary decisions that swallowed up the better part of two years — from 2008 to 2010.



“I like going back to places.

Dressed for the Season

Dressed for the season in brown burlap, striking dramatic poses all around town like models on a runway, hundreds of shrubs and trees stand bundled root to crown in their protective winter coats, ready for whatever Jack Frost can throw at them. (Photos by Durell Godfrey)

Mr. Lindenfeld selected black bowling balls from his collection of more than 100 to accent the grounds of his house, which is on Cooper Lane in East Hampton Village and was built in 1911. From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

    A modest bungalow dating from 1911 on Cooper Lane in East Hampton is populated by pictures and objects that have been found at galleries, yard sales, and thrift shops. Before the owner, an architect and interior designer, takes anything home, he asks, “Does it speak to me? Is there a quality that’s interesting or amusing or wonderful? Or is it unbelievably awful?” He collects for each of those reasons.



    The show begins in the house’s driveway, which, in a kitsch salute to the traditional cannonball lawn ornament, Alan J.

Gimme: Heart and Soul

NOT JUST DESSERT

The original of this replica on tin was made for a royal banquet in London in 1851. Charming enough to go on a wall, serve petit fours to 10-year-olds, or for picnics. Other patterns available. Not for the dishwasher. $12. The Monogram Shop, 11 Newtown Lane, East Hampton.



 

In an Era of Teardowns, a Case for Preservation

Preserving and loving a house on land granted in 1650 to William Mulford, one of the original East Hampton settlers, filled with shabby-chic furnishings and treasured mementos of family life.

The simplicity of the front porch decorations offers a hint of the festive yet restrained approach throughout the house. In Time for Christmas

    East Hampton may seem a long way from Michigan but for someone like Jill Lasersohn, who grew up on a farm near Lake Huron, the landscape looks remarkably like home. And like her childhood Christmases, Ms.

A sculpture of horses by Robert L. Hooke, an artist who lives in Sag Harbor, welcomes visitors to Susan Goldstein’s North Haven house. Her  daughter is a professional equestrian. Innovative and Sustainable From Top to Bottom

    Were George Washington alive today, he wouldn’t have to apologize for cutting down the cherry tree: He would repurpose it. That’s what Susan Goldstein did with two cherry trees that were in decline on her North Haven property, one of which was more than 100 years old. Instead of letting the wood end up in a landfill, she challenged Will Paulson, a Mattituck cabinetmaker, to find uses for it.

Modern Concepts Informed a Springs Renovation

When Glenn Leitch saw the house in Springs, he was smitten. “It was in pretty bad shape then, and most people would have torn it down,” he said. But he “loved the lines of it. It reminded me of Jackson Pollock’s house.”

Breaking waves, not falling water, inspired this 1986 beach house. Modern Curves and Portholes



A sandcastle, cruise ship, discotheque, and whitewashed house on a Greek island all come to mind, although the vernacular is mid-20th century modern. Without question, the owners have spent this summer in one of the most remarkable oceanfront houses on the South Fork. They call its design timeless. 

The 2,400-square-foot house has made Beach Hampton beach walkers buzz for almost 30 years, since 1986, when it reared its stucco walls, barrel-like roofs, and porthole windows, disrupting the parade of modest wood-clad buildings.

The main house, with cues from Japanese architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright, is large but nestled into the landscape. It faces part of the water garden. Quintessential Compound

Monica Graham has always been fascinated by the idea of a Gertrude Stein salon, to which visitors were drawn by master works of art. In her own way, she has put together a compound with masterly gardens and indoor amenities to which her many relatives and friends are drawn.



There are actually three gardens – a multi-level water garden with a rivulet, koi ponds, and small waterfalls, a formal, enclosed garden with a fountain, and a woodland garden.

A second story was added and the original chimney extended, top, but the renovated section retains the original vocabulary. Respectful Renovation of a 1950s Classic

When Robert and Jeanette Schwagerl purchased the house on Quail Hill in Amagansett in 1989, it had been for the most part abandoned. “I was going to tear it down,” Mr. Schwagerl said during a recent tour. Within a year, he had designed a new house and hired Ed Hollander, a landscape architect, to plan the grounds.



But the Schwagerls soon fell in love with the existing house and abandoned the idea of demolishing it. Over the years they made a few cosmetic changes, but by 2010, with two teenaged children. Mr.

Salvia Amistad Star Gardener: Mondo Plant Sale

Gardening worldwide is undergoing a sea change as ecological considerations become more influential in our garden-making decisions.