Summer House – Hamptons

Remsenburg, NY

Summer House Hamptons

For a large, newly-built house near Westhampton Beach, our challenge was to forge dimension, texture and style through a sequence of architectural interventions. By adding more windows we created a symmetry to the elevations which had been missing; replacing sliding doors with French doors augmented the atmosphere with dignity.

Our goal was not to encrust a contemporary house with period ornament, but to lend it the time-honored language of understated architectural detail, a way of accentuating and humanizing space.

The floors of the house were originally surfaced in a variety of materials, including tile, which made the rooms feel “chopped up.” To create an unbroken sense of flow–and warmth– from room to room, we installed dark wood floors throughout, using sea grass and sisal area rugs to further unify the rooms.

The double-height living room had a rather blank fireplace with a sheetrock surround. Using Connecticut fieldstone, we built a floor to ceiling surround using the “drystack” building method, in which no mortar is visible; the rough effect added shadows and texture to the space. A massive 19th-century wooden chandelier brings human scale to the 18-foot ceiling.

With the house itself thus reimagined, furnishing became a delightful enterprise of layering English and American 19th century antiques with pieces from South America, the Far East and India, including colonial styles. Warmth, materiality and restrained rusticity became the keynotes of this house, which now appears rooted and timeless, inside and out.

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The blue-grey of the house’s exterior shingles is complemented by the use of bluestone surrounding the swimming pool, punctuated, in turn, by small gridded metal lamps.

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An old chest harbors a collection of objects evincing texture and interest, including the lamp, which we had cast, and an 18th century architectural engraving of an obelisk.

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An 18th century Italian armoire, ten feet high, sheathes the family’s entertainment center and balances the fireplace on the opposite side of the living room.

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Dark wooden floors carry through into the kitchen, contrasting crisply with finely crafted millwork lacquered in off-white, and the taupe window frames of the double-height dining area.

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The double-height drystack fireplace, its hearth and mantelpiece made of slabs of bluestone, is a dominant organic element in the room, suggesting the earth tones of the upholstery fabrics: grey plush velvet, antique linen and leather. A heavy coffee table, a relic of the Raj, is counterpointed by a delicate William Morris Sussex chair. Traditional Shaker doors and moldings are painted a soft taupe.

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Regency rules in the master bedroom, with a caned bench at the foot of the bed. A comfortable armchair upholstered in maroon and white stripes and printed curtains of the same color heighten the 19th century atmosphere of the room.

Senior Designer Craig Strulovitz
Photos by Gross & Daley

Oceanfront Home – Hamptons

Watermill, NY

Hamptons Oceanfront Home

We began designing this waterfront weekend house in Water Mill, Long Island, overlooking both the Atlantic Ocean and Mecox Bay, over twenty years ago – and we venture to say it has stood the test of time. In fact, like any good house, the design we forged in the early 1990s has demanded change and evolution; but there is a certain consistency of style and predilection–both the client’s and ours–for art, furniture, and artifacts, European and American, of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For a Shingle Style house on a grand scale–9000 square feet–our penchant for spareness was challenged by the obvious need for a sense of fullness in the rooms.

East Hampton architect Francis Fleetwood, who built the house for Hirsch, had endowed it with aspects derived from late-19th-century sources: porches, facades, fireplaces, shingles, and wood paneling. Yet finally the house evinces a late twentieth-century simplicity, a subtle drive towards modernity. In furnishing the house, we endeavored to strike a balance between old-fashioned comfort and warmth and modern legibility.

Fleetwood’s design is notable for its many windows–and window seats–giving the house an extraordinary lightness. Therefore we were able to place rather deeply colored, rich furniture in it–Shaker and Mission pieces; Arts and Crafts era antiques; fin de siecle Austrian elements. The result is a house that is welcoming to its many summer guests, yet cozily suited to romantic winter weekends a deux.

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A long carved-wood trestle bench beckons to guests in this tableaux replete with Chinese Chippendale tables.

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A towering double-height entry, paneled in white painted mortice-and-tenon squares, echoes the great houses of Lutyens, with an elegant sweeping staircase.

"I first worked with Glenn Gissler over 25 years ago when I was building a new oceanfront home in Watermill, New York that I still enjoy today. We recently did some refreshing of the main floor, but the countless decisions we made decades ago stood the test of time."

– Client

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Stunning Arts & Crafts chairs from Newel Art Galleries with splats formed like arrows and spades, a mysterious, moody seascape painting and abundant low lighting–designed by us–create an atmosphere in this dining room that seems of another time and place.

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A glimpse of the dining room from the living room reveals an Arts and Crafts-style chandelier of five shaded lamps. The tall velvet sofa, with deep fringe at the bottom, is accompanied by an early 20th century table and lamp.

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The capacious and embracing English-style sofa is covered in wool from Coraggio; the tapestried Louis XIII chair is from Reymer-Jourdan. The low table is Dutch Colonial, from Rene Antiques. A richly figured indigo and orange carpet from Safavieh enhances the complexity and color of the room.

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An electrified oil lamp hangs over a rugged trestle table surrounded by English chairs from Newel Art Galleries.

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A delightful corner of the library evokes the cafes of Vienna and Berlin. Dutch Colonial Indonesian chairs, 1920s, in a late Arts and Crafts style, accompany an Austrian walnut table of 1910. French iron wall sconces are from Reymer-Jourdan Antiques.

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The porch, its floor faced in pale grey stone which echoes the blue-greys of the ocean in the distance, is a space for the pleasures both of entertainment and solitude.