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KISS & TELL

KISS & TELL

WHEN THE WORLD WENT INTO LOCKDOWN, ANDREW SOLOMON HAD JUST FINISHED A DECADE-LONG RENOVATION OF MARIENRUH, THE STORIED DUTCHESS COUNTY ESTATE HE PURCHASED IN 2006. HE DESCRIBES HOW THE COUNTRY RETREAT BECAME HIS FAMILY’S HAVEN DURING QUARANTINE

MARIENRUH PHOTOGRAPHY BY PIETER ESTERSOHN FROM PIETER ESTERSOHN, LIFE ALONG THE HUDSON, THE HISTORIC COUNTRY ESTATES OF THE LIVINGSTON FAMILY.

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UPON REFLECTION Marienruh, built for heiress Alice Astor and her husband Prince Serge Obolensky in 1926, sits on 100 acres overlooking the Hudson River.

John joked that my idea of appreciating the countryside was looking out the window at sunset through the bottom of a wine glass.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS At a holiday gathering at Marienruh, Andrew Solomon (in red trousers) stands with (left to right) his husband, John Habich; son, George; daughter, Blaine; and her mother, also Blaine.

We spent ten years renovating and restoring our country house in Rhinebeck (corrupt builders, hidden conditions, the town zoning board) and we moved in, officially, in late 2018. There is little I loathe more than moving: the boxes were everywhere, the good offices of our beleaguered cleaning ladies seemed barely to clear the dust, there were no curtains, the furniture was either missing or not yet reupholstered, the plumbing made inexplicable shrieking noises, and the phones rang even when no one was calling. The yard was strewn with outdoor furniture that had not yet found its place, giving the impression that we were hoping to be cast in a remake of The Beverly Hillbillies. The books! Box upon box upon box. Getting the books on the shelves in any kind of coherent order was a project that demanded only a month or so of full-time attention, and who doesn’t have a month to while away in such a rewarding pursuit? Things we hated awaited wall space (why did we ever frame that?) and things we loved were impossible to hang. The hot water was so hot that you could burn yourself if you turned the faucet wrong. The Internet came and went like a poltergeist, and the oven could be set only to raw or burnt. Our odd-sized bed had no sheets that fit, so we were camping out in a guest room without good lamps, leaving us with flashlights balanced on our knees for reading stories to our son George, then nine. Cumbersome things neither my husband John nor I remembered purchasing had been delivered to our house, and our favorite Regency settee had vanished along with the German baroque cradle John gave me the year we agreed to have a child. We had bemoaned the costs of construction terminable and interminable and celebrated being done with it, but somehow as we moved in, we incurred a panoply of peculiar bills that would have daunted the Sultan of Brunei.

In addition, there was a human cost to calculate: things I loved because they had belonged to my grandmother offended John’s aesthetic, while things he loved because they had belonged to his grandmother required of me a tact I had seldom deployed in our twenty years together. He had bought things he knew I wouldn’t like and then given them to me as presents so that I had to live with them. I had bought things I knew he might not like and then daringly positioned them where I thought he would accede to their display. I rearranged about half the things he objected to, and he caved on about half the things I objected to. I gave John a drawing as an anniversary gift that he correctly observed would look best in my study, where it now hangs—in the end, then, a present to myself. All marriages have their politics and ours had been fairly benign; now, we seemed to burst with arguments both suppressed and expressed. I pride myself on my intellect and humanitarianism, but I never forget that my first serious boyfriend and I broke up over our differing opinions about the curtains in a hotel in Sintra. Maps of Portugal still make me sad.

Moving in was far more gradual than we had anticipated. John vehemently took on the picture-hanging, rather to my irritation, then proved gifted at it, rather to my surprise. I ran the show on the pelmets since I’m the pelmet enthusiast in our family (every family should have one). I ordered all the dog beds and most of the lampshades. We had of course been in negotiations like this since the first designs were proposed for the house by our beloved friend and trusted designer Robert Couturier, whom I had known for thirty years and who had been our stalwart through the interminable construction process. Robert functioned as a visionary therapist, proposing alternate solutions whenever John and I were fixated

on opposing strategies. I could tell when Robert was pretending to agree with John for the sake of peace, but I could never tell when he was pretending to agree with me. I mostly agreed with Robert; doing so made life easier and his taste ultimately accorded with my own. But there were frustrating inefficiencies in the process. I tried to wheedle and beguile out of his office the fundamental decorative items we so clearly needed, then occasionally got all dramatic and peevish until, bit by bit, things began to show up. I occasionally got dramatic and peevish with John, too, and so did he with me. George watched all this neurotic conflict in a state of bewilderment. He had seen us agree on so many direly important things and now there was a basso continuo of passive aggression thrumming under our happy family.

The first year in a new house is always experimental, but by Christmas of 2019, we had resolved many of the most pressing issues and I had ceased to regret that we ever contemplated a house in the country. We passed some pleasant winter weekends in Rhinebeck and drank champagne in front of the fire. The phones no longer rang at all, most of the rooms felt unfinished but habitable, and my beloved research assistant had dealt with the books. The lighting was all wrong in most of the

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL SHARKEY

“It is true that I sometimes felt like a B-movie Marie Antoinette in this rural idyll . . . but the first order of business was to remain cheerful, and we mostly did.”

rooms but we at least knew how we wanted to fix it. The pot rack! Well, one can live without a pot rack for a while if the beleaguered man who is making it does gorgeous metalwork on a fitful basis. I finally had the family photos all printed to the right sizes for the nineteenth-century frames I had collected and out they went on the big console tables in the living room. They made the house feel like ours—at least, they made it feel that way to me.

When George’s spring break, 2020, rolled around, we headed off for a week in the tropics with my extended family, only to depart early because the border was being sealed. Upon our return, we drove from the airport to Rhinebeck and moved temporarily into living permanently in what we’d imagined to be a weekend house. As the Covid months wore on, the place took on the feeling that places have only when they are genuinely inhabited, the character no house has unless its owners can find their way through it in the dark. We were no longer perched there like birds ready to take wing with a change of the wind. We burrowed in like moles. I had always been a city boy, born and bred in New York and later an inhabitant of London, of Moscow, of big, busy metropolises where everything was happening at

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL SHARKEY

George, thoroughly exasperated, finally said, “Daddy, don’t you ever talk about anything besides Mormons and curtains?”

once. John joked that my idea of appreciating the countryside was looking out the window at sunset through the bottom of a wine glass. But now there were no cities: New York as we’d known it was erased. While isolation would have felt sinister in Manhattan, it felt appropriate in Rhinebeck.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude that this twelve-years-by-then project had come to fruition in time for us to retreat there and was perhaps grateful also that it hadn’t been ready sooner, that we were still discovering the thrill of residence, which made our sequestration feel more like an adventure and less like a prison sentence. Unlike many of my friends, I could go out for walks any time and without a mask; I could take George to the trampoline; I could eat on the loggia. John had planted a vegetable garden and we had tomatoes so sweet they might have been nectarines. It is true that I sometimes felt like a B-movie Marie Antoinette in this rural idyll—frankly, I would have gone for a flock of sheep and an outfit designed for appearing to herd them—but the first order of business was to remain cheerful, and we mostly did.

I arrived at material obsessions to distract me from the fact that we might all die soon from a deadly virus that had already snuffed out people I knew, leaving us quietly bereft. When I couldn’t cope with reports of refrigerated trucks full of corpses, I measured for the missing lampshades. When I was working on my book and failed to persuade the words to come, I went online looking for antique tapestry cushions. When I felt that the intensity of sheltering with my husband, my son, and my surrogate father-in-law was more than I could bear, I rearranged the dishes so that they had sensible permanent locations. And when the fact that Donald Trump was president struck terror and outrage into my soul, I figured out where we could best deploy the Chinese Chippendale table (which was definitely not Chinese and probably not Chippendale, though it was, at least, a table).

This whole line of behavior drove our son wild with irritation. George is boyish to an extent that seems almost embarrassing to gay parents. He would happily wear the same t-shirt and nylon shorts (where on earth did the nylon shorts even come from?) every day and wouldn’t brush his hair for a month at a time. He likes his comforts and wants the bed to be yielding and the pillows to be soft, but whether the linens are trimmed in the same color as the upholstered box spring is a matter to which he refused attention even after it was delineated to him a dozen triumphant times. He liked good restaurants when one could still go to them and he is a food snob, turning up his nose at overcooked fish or doughy pizza, but whether he is served on Spode, Meissen, Flora Danica, or paper plates is a matter of sheer indifference to him. He knows our house to be beautiful more than he perceives it to be beautiful and he doesn’t much care either way.

I had been working for months on an article about polygamy and polyamory, the details of which I thought as interesting a topic as any other available one, given that none of us was doing anything but that (me), George’s schoolwork (him—and he definitely did not want to discuss it at dinner), and planting things (John). So I often shared information about my day’s progress on Utah fundamentalism. George, thoroughly exasperated, finally said, “Daddy, don’t you ever talk about anything besides Mormons and curtains?”

Reprinted from Home: A Celebration, edited by Charlotte Moss, Rizzoli, copyright 2021. The book is published in collaboration with No Kid Hungry, a campaign committed to ending hunger and poverty.

LIVING

FOR INTERIORS TASTEMAKERS, THE DESIGN CENTER OF THE AMERICAS MAY BE THE MOST INFLUENTIAL DESTINATION IN SOUTH FLORIDA, WRITES ARIA DARCELLA

Sun, Sea and Style

DESIGN CENTER OF THE AMERICAS: SCOTT FRANCES, COURTESY OF THE DESIGN CENTER OF THE AMERICAS

TREASURE TROVE Above, the entrance to the Design Center of the Americas in Dania Beach, Florida; opposite, shelving units finished with white gold leaf by Baker Interiors, which has a showroom in the DCOTA.

Interior designer Josh Fein had just left a lunch meeting with his partner and was headed to pick up carpet samples at the Design Center of the Americas (DCOTA) in Dania Beach, Florida, ahead of presenting to a client, when he had a creative crisis. Their vision wasn’t all it could be; he had to start afresh.

“I actually pushed my meeting back an hour and did an aggressive re-shop for my client’s presentation,” he explains. “My business partner could not believe what I got done in one hour.”

That’s the benefit of proximity to the DCOTA, a sprawling, 775,000-square-foot, three-building campus. Fein, who was its marketing director from 2011 to 2014, and now co-owns the Miami-based firm Fein Zalkin Interiors, knows the center intimately. Jetting between retailers like Ammon

Hickson in the B building to Pierre Frey in the A building (and a few others in between), he was able to quickly reconceive an entire residential design.

“It’s almost like a team effort to make sure I leave with as many resources as I possibly can in a short amount of time,” he said. “I was so invigorated after that pull. And even though I worked my butt off and ran from showroom to showroom, I felt alive again...the day at DCOTA really inspired me, reminded me why I love what I do. And it reminded me how important it was to be in most showrooms.”

The DCOTA has been the premier design destination in Dania Beach since it opened in 1985. In 2005 it was acquired by Charles S. Cohen (publisher of Avenue magazine) as a South Florida complement to his D&D Building in Manhattan, the Decorative Center Houston, and the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. He launched a $30 million renovation of the campus, including an upgraded restaurant, valet parking, and a revamped atrium.

“He definitely has a way of creating a design environment that draws people in. You want to see beautiful things, you want to be surrounded by amenities that are at a certain level,” explains Key Hall, chief executive of Cowtan & Tout, which has had showrooms in the DCOTA for 25 years.

HEART OF GLASS Below, the atrium of the DCOTA, designed by Area Architecture; opposite, a living room designed by Fein Zalkin Interiors, featuring items from DCOTA showrooms, including a rug from Tai Ping, a chandelier from Wired Custom Lighting, and a bench from Ammon Hickson.

“They worked very hard to consolidate and capture much more of an industry experience and made it easier to shop...I always say there’s a reason why Chanel is right next to YSL, and YSL is next to Prada: you need to be next to your competitors. And the best way to capture an audience is to be with the top of the industry.

“The natural light is absolutely such a great feature. There’s beautiful skylights,” she adds. “When you’re in Florida, you want to be somewhere that’s cool on the inside, but you don’t want to lose that natural light because it’s so crucial.”

Investing in the experience of shopping was strategic. After a generation of consumers migrated online, the pendulum now seems to be swinging back, with more shoppers looking to be wowed— and make purchasing decisions—in person.

“Ten, 20 years ago, designers would come into the design center, initiate their project, look for inspirations, things they like. Now most of them will inspect online first, and then contact us for a quote,” explains Mike Kuo, vice president of showrooms at Baker Interiors Group, which has been at the DCOTA since the early ’90s. “But most of them in the end will still come into the showroom to physically experience the product. We offer customized options, and we have great details, great tailoring—those things cannot be experienced or shown online.”

Designers seem to agree. “People want at any point in time to be able to touch, feel, sit, look at the product and engage with it in some fashion,” says Fanny Haim, owner of Fanny Haim & Associates. “It is a valuable exercise to take people to actually see the product. Some people really actually only want to buy something once they’ve sat on it.”

“I will not do a presentation without touching and feeling it,” agrees Fein. It’s a standard of quality he’s holding on to even as his business continues to grow. “People forget that we’re in such a visual industry. And I think we jeopardize our designs by not being as hands-on as we could be.”

As shoppers’ habits have evolved, so too have the demographics in Florida. At the moment, the state could not be more popular. Over the course of her four-decade career, Haim has observed more new clients calling southern Florida home, drawn there for its light and luxurious aesthetic. “Miami has always been a destination city for out-of-towners,” she says. “Now it’s become not only a second or third home base, but people are actually relocating to Miami. I guess that is pretty much characteristic of the post-pandemic world.

“Having been a witness to the birth and permanent reinvention of the Design Center, it’s always a place I feel proud to take my clients because it really has set a standard of elegance,” she adds. “It’s nice to see that we still have that base, for the industry to have a go-to resource.”

WISH YOU WERE HERE POSTCARDS FROM THE FASHION EDGE BY HORACIO SILVA ILLUSTRATIONS BY HEATHER POLK

Having a lovely time in a Giambattista Valli silk chiffon dress. $3,660; giambattistavalli.com

The weather is great, the shopping is better. Bought a Chanel printed silk crepe top, $2,800; shorts, $2,700; and coat, $9,300; chanel.com

Been enjoying the sights in a Max Mara cashmere and silk dress. $3,690; maxmara.com

Caught a bit too much sun, saved by a Balenciaga pleated drape dress. $5,950; balenciaga.com

Thinking of you, but mostly about a Christian Dior goddess dress. $10,000; dior.com

Palm Readers

PILLAR OF THE COMMUNITY Addison Mizner at his showpiece Cloister Inn, now the Boca Raton Resort and Club.

Brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner blazed a devil’s triangle between California, New York, and Palm Beach, cutting ethical corners but leaving a legacy of landmark architecture and irreverent wit. Ambrose McGaffney reevaluates the fin de siècle bad boys

The term “Gilded Age” was never meant as a compliment. The title of an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner about materialism and corruption in post-Civil War America, the reader was meant to understand the era’s “gilding” as mere artifice and ornament— the opposite of authentic, solid gold. That phrase may be the perfect lens through which to examine the brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner—two contemporaneous scoundrels who delighted in gilding the facts around their own sometimes scurrilous lives.

In South Florida, and especially among the blessed islanders of the 33480, Addison, the elder brother, needs no introduction. The self-made architect with a gift for Mediterranean pastiche created a distinctive aesthetic that not only pleased clients during his Palm Beach period— which lasted roughly from 1918 until his death in 1933, aged 60—but also created the set for a mid-century pageant of American aristocracy that would be reproduced around the world by artists like the society photographer Slim Aarons.

In his business and personal lives, however,

Addison’s record is somewhat messier. There was a failed real estate speculation leading to bankruptcy, as well as some public “relationships” with high-born women (one of whom, the heiress Bertha Dolbeer, committed suicide in 1904 by jumping out a ninth-floor window of the

Waldorf-Astoria) which obscured his rather more sincere interest in handsome younger men.

“Wilson loved women sexually; Addison cherished their friendship and companionship,”

Richard René Silvin wrote in Villa Mizner: The

House That Changed Palm Beach, his 2014 study of the architect’s life and selected work.

Silvin intuited the bond forged by the colorful lifestyles of Addison and his ne’er-do-well younger brother, whom the architect reportedly referred to as “my chief weakness and dreaded menace.”

Wilson Mizner was a Broadway playwright, con man, and all-around hustler. According to biographer Alva Johnston, he “was the No. 1 sport, or man about town, in 1910. He was a glittering object…walked into restaurants wearing a made-to-order silk hat two inches higher than the norm…had the highest collars in the world specially made for him…carried a white-handled, white-shafted cane three or four inches taller than any other known walking stick and wore an

Inverness cape thrown back over his shoulders to show its white satin lining.”

He was also a gambler and opium addict who nevertheless enjoyed middling success as a writer on the Great White Way and in Hollywood, and

WILSON MIZNER: COURTESY HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PALM BEACH COUNTY; BOCA RATON HOTEL AND CLUB: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

CANE AND ABLE The Boca Raton Hotel and Club seen in 1954, on the eve of a $2 million restoration; below right, Wilson Mizner, playwright and rogue.

THEIR STORY INSPIRED BOTH IRVING BERLIN (WHO BEGAN BUT LATER ABANDONED A MUSICAL ABOUT WILSON) AND STEPHEN SONDHEIM.

CHECK YOUR POCKETS Wilson Mizner looking respectable at the Cloister Inn in Boca Raton.

contributed various bons mots to the language that are still in currency today. “Be nice to people on your way up, because you’ll meet them on your way down,” for example, is reputed to be his. Also: “If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.” (And even if it isn’t one of his classics, honorary mention must surely go to: “To my embarrassment, I was born in bed with a lady.”)

The peculiar, symbiotic relationship between the brothers—two of eight children born to a prosperous family in Benicia, California—has been a subject of esoteric fascination since their death less than two months apart in 1933; Wilson was just 56.

Their story inspired both Irving Berlin (who began but later abandoned a musical about Wilson) and Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim’s version opened at the Kennedy Center in 2003 as Bounce, having struggled through earlier iterations under the titles Road Show, Wise Guys, and Gold!

The opening number sets the tone of the brothers’ toxic codependence by referencing various grievances and shady dealings. “Just trying to help further your career,” Wilson tells Addison in regard to a (possibly invented) horse-doping scandal. His brother replies: “Well, when you got finished helping, I didn’t have a career!”

Alas, the show didn’t help Sondheim’s career either, after the New York Times critic Ben Brantley’s chilly review iced any prospects of it transferring to Broadway.

Although the composer took some license in depicting the brothers’ lives, the outline was based in fact. Their father was an American diplomat to Central America, exposing his children to an early dose of exoticism that would inspire both the architect’s and the writer’s later work. In 1897, Addison, Wilson, and two other brothers participated in Canada’s Klondike gold rush—although in Wilson’s case it was as a petty crook, rather than a miner. Given Wilson’s lax relationship with the truth, it’s hard to verify his next stops, but they may have included running a saloon in Nome, Alaska; living on a banana plantation in Honduras; and gambling professionally in San Francisco, before donning his silk top hat and cane and coming to New York.

In parallel, brother Addison also invented or embellished various exploits on his own résumé, including claiming to have planned the town of Dawson Creek, British Columbia; receiving a commission to build a palace for the dictator of Guatemala in return for $25,000 in gold bullion; and attending the prestigious University of Salamanca in Spain, during which stay he

HAT’S ENTERTAINMENT The original Brown Derby restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, opened by Wilson in 1926.

“TO MY EMBARRASSMENT, I WAS BORN IN BED WITH A LADY.”

WILSON MIZNER received a personal visit from the country’s king, Alfonso XIII, who inexplicably wanted to give him some wood paneling. (Addison had a habit of ascribing grand European provenance to architectural details in his Palm Beach homes that were in fact manufactured by Florida workshops.)

A large-scale 1926 real estate development in Boca Raton—for which Wilson served as treasurer—resulted in Addison’s personal bankruptcy and losses for investors. Wilson hightailed it to Hollywood, where he wrote screenplays for Warner Bros. and opened the iconic Brown Derby on Wilshire Boulevard, which became a fashionable film industry watering hole.

Sondheim’s Bounce opens just after these events, with the two brothers, both newly deceased, meeting in the great hereafter.

“You don’t suppose this really is heaven,” Wilson asks incredulously.

“If guys like you get to go to heaven, Willie, who has to go to hell?” Addison replies.

Wilson considers this for a moment and responds, “Point taken.”

Jessica Markowski

CARDINALS FACE THE ROYALS

The White Cross Ball of New York City brought together a prince, two archbishops, and a heavenly host of socials at the Metropolitan Club.

HE Timothy Cardinal Dolan

Julia Kanovich Anna Zayachkivska

Vanessa and Philippe Delgrange Gala honorees Pierre-André de Chalendar and Marc Levy; outgoing FIAF president Marie-Monique Steckel; Contessa Brewer; Clo Cohen and Charles S. Cohen

FRENCH EXIT

The FIAF Gala honored its outgoing president, Marie-Monique Steckel, as well as Marc Levy and Pierre-André de Chalendar.

Beanie Feldstein and Bonnie Chance Roberts

Steven Yeun

CINEMA SOCIETY: BFA; PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION: PATRICK MCMULLAN

First Lastname and First Lastname Arte and Carole Moreno Amanda Seyfried and Celine Rattray

DINNER AND A MOVIE

The Cinema Society held premieres for A Mouthful of Air and The Humans. Separately, the Prostate Cancer Foundation held its 25th annual New York dinner at the Plaza Hotel.

Tony Bechara and Desiree La Valette

Thelma Golden and Ann Tenenbaum Stavros Niarchos, Dasha Zhukova, and Bronson van Wyck

TARGET ACQUIRED

The Metropolitan Museum of Art held its 2021 Acquisitions Gala with dinner and music on Fifth Avenue.

John Carpenter and Mary Wallach Susan Fales-Hill, Andrew Solomon, and Amy Fine Collins

Ronald and Jo Carole Lauder

John Rosenwald and Daisy Soros

Adolfo Zaralegui, Pamela Patsley, Mary-Randolph Ballinger, and James Borynack

AMERICANS IN PARADISE

The Society of the Four Arts and Findlay Galleries held a dinner honoring major donors of its upcoming Americans in Paris Dinner Dance fundraiser.

Ann Fromer and Sondra Mack

Jun Ge

Sylvester and Gillian Miniter Gillian Hearst, Ariana Rockefeller, Georgina Bloomberg, and Lili Buffett

SNOW BALL

The New York Botanical Garden held its annual Winter Wonderland Ball in support of the Children’s Education Program.

Thank-You Nots

Sick of sending thank-you notes after having a crummy time? Satirist Posey Wilt is launching a new line of printed greeting cards for when you just can’t fake gratitude

Dinner last night was an absolute chore Your dogs are annoying and your husband’s a bore The food was disgusting, in need of a fix Which you’d know if you’d eaten since 2006.

Last night at the opera, we were guests in your box You talked through the acts like you were home watching Fox Tell me again what you love about Verdi? It’s so hard to tell, since you fell asleep at 9:30.

What can I say about yesterday’s lunch? Your jewelry was stunning, and it is my hunch That you pack it on thicker than tropical rain Because your diamonds are dazzling, unlike your brain.

Congrats on your wedding! And isn’t it funny They say first time for love, second for money Even though this is your fourth husband, true Nobody’s had more second marriages than you.

SCAN FOR FULL LISTING

Gary R. DePersia

Licensed Associate Real Estate Broker m 516.380.0538 | gdp@corcoran.com

Cedar Point: A Unique Pre-Construction Opportunity

Sag Harbor. To turn your dreams into reality, all your resources, efforts and concentration should be aligned in the same direction. For one fortunate buyer this alignment has been achieved by the collaboration between Todd O’Connell, architect, Long Island Building Systems, and interiors by Habitech Planning & Design who have come together to create what will be a masterful 6,000 SF shingled traditional on three levels of living space with pool and tennis set within 1.6 acres on a quiet country lane, ending on the Peconic Bay. A private graveled driveway ringed in Belgian block will welcome all to this 6 bedroom country retreat that will offer the epitome of Hampton chic including great room with fireplace, dining room, gourmet eat in kitchen bolstered by a large pantry, study and a luxurious first floor master suite offering a spa like bath. A guest suite, laundry room, powder room and a 3 - car garage complete the first floor. Upstairs three additional bedroom suites await while more than 600 SF of unfinished space above the garage present numerous possibilities including additional bedrooms if needed. The finished lower level offers bedroom, full bath, recreational room and significant space for future build out. Outside both covered and uncovered patios look out to the 20’ X 40’ heated Gunite pool with spa serviced by its own bathroom as well as the all-weather tennis court set within a a generous lawn, all framed by mature trees sheltering the property from its neighbors. An ingenious plan to be sure but if your vision requires something different you have ample opportunity at this juncture to customize the house and property to your needs. In fact you could purchase the land and create something of your own with the parameters of the current permitting. With the villages of Sag Harbor, Bridgehampton and Water Mill nearby, this singular opportunity will put you in the middle of all the action that makes the Hamptons a world class year round destination. Exclusive. $4.795M WEB# 883282

Real estate agents affiliated with The Corcoran Group are independent contractors and are not employees of The Corcoran Group. Equal Housing Opportunity. The Corcoran Group is a licensed real estate broker located at 660 Madison Ave, NY, NY 10065. All listing phone numbers indicate listing agent direct line unless otherwise noted. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Corcoran makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice. All dimensions provided are approximate. To obtain exact dimensions, Corcoran advises you to hire a qualified architect or engineer.

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