Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons Book

The beach house was "the sonnet form of American architecture," writes Alastair Gordon. "This was where the revolution began." In his gracefully written, stunningly illustrated book, he shows how the evolution of summer housing on the once-rural eastern end of Long Island, New York, heralded key developments in architecture. By the late 1920s, the sprawling Southampton mansions of Stanford White and others were passé. The new style was a modernist box, raised up on supporting columns for protection and a better view, with a sun deck and floor-to-ceiling windows. (See Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Midcentury Oasis or Palm Springs Modern: Houses in the California Desert for a West Coast version of modernist vacation home design.) After World War II, the Hamptons became a favorite destination of New York artists, architects, and writers, who ushered in a period of fanciful experimentation. Then came the deluge. Gordon's own family, who bought their prefab beach home in the '50s, was part of a trend celebrated by Life magazine in 1959, the year Nixon and Khrushchev held their Kitchen Debate at a Leisurama house. Gordon vividly describes the innovations of the '50s and '60s, from the stunningly pure Blake House (two square, ground-hugging sections with a central breezeway framing the ocean view) to the proud verticals of the Gwathmey House, clad in vertical cedar siding approximating the look of carved concrete. In the '70s, as ocean-view lots became scarce, some architects ignored the natural setting, creating imposing sculptural statements craning to isolate an elusive view. Others, including Robert Venturi and Jack Lenore Larsen, gave vernacular styles a postmodern twist. Rightly decrying the neotraditional behemoths built in the '80s to satisfy the insecurities of the megarich, Gordon takes the long view. Each wave of newcomers remade this flat land in their own image, yet "something about it resists change." --Cathy Curtis Read More