A Luxuriously Renovated Horace Gifford House in the Pines

Beams on the ceiling trace the simplicity of Horace Gifford’s original design, a combination of four cedar boxes walled in glass.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

The architect Horace Gifford believed that we should not go on vacation to do chores. The 40 cedar-and-glass beach houses that he built across Fire Island in the 1960s and ’70s were designed with no lawns to mow, the simplest of galley kitchens, and a minimum of shelves, to discourage the accumulation of junk that would require dusting. Gifford, a gay Floridian who had grown up on the sand, understood how to live well. He liked to show up to client meetings in a speedo, and built living rooms that could turn into love nests when the conversation pit was filled in with his custom pillows. “It’s about maximizing fun and freedom from the tyranny of constant maintenance,” said Christopher Rawlins, an architect who became Gifford’s loudest champion. “I call it artful camping.”

617 Shore Walk, in the Pines, was built on-spec in 1963 to showcase Gifford’s ideas for a simple, utilitarian beach house at a low price: Rawlins speculated that it would have sold for around $10,000 — or $103,000 today. The home is essentially four cedar boxes, each the proportion of a shoe box, lined up side to side.

Mentored by Louis Kahn, Gifford may have sketched this home with thoughts of Mies van der Rohe and Paul Rudolph, Rawlins suggests.
Art: Courtesy Pines Modern

At each end, a sliding-glass door opens onto a deck that spans the home, so a visitor can always cross the house to find a spot of sun or shade. The two “boxes” at the western end of the house are combined into an open living area, which leads into another “box” devoted to a bathroom, and the last is divided into two equal-size rooms where beds face the windows and views over the deck. Gifford’s genius is easiest to spot in his details: The living area is an exact square; elongated eaves shade the deck, forestalling the need for umbrellas; and the bedroom door does double duty, closing off the closet when it slides open.

Decks on the front and back of the original house were identical and capped with wide eaves. Each bay also has a hidden function: camouflaging cedar doors that could be closed to protect the glass.
Art: Courtesy Pines Modern

Rawlins couldn’t find much on 617 in his research, and failed to track down people who knew its first owner, Marjorie Dell, a single woman who worked in theater before her death in 1993 (and who apparently loved Shakespeare). What he did find was a clip from a defunct design magazine that centered on one of the home’s most innovative hacks: swinging cedar doors that made it easy for Dell to close the house for the season “alone and in about five minutes.” Despite that innovation, the house was weathered by 2009, when its next owner, the interior decorator Rob Southern, first saw it, looking up at the stars through holes in the ceiling. “It was scary. I mean, scary,” he told Cottages & Gardens. He and his co-owner, a Ralph Lauren executive named Bill Melnick, updated the home, adding air-conditioning and heat. They kept Gifford’s simple shoe-box forms but added a wing that includes two more bedrooms and a new kitchen, then broadened one deck to make room for a pool with a hot tub.

Gifford’s original form (right) now backs onto a wide deck and pool, walled in by a new addition, forming a T-shape.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

“They zhuzhed it up in a way all these guys did with these houses when they moved up the food chain,” said broker Vinnie Petrarca, who lives in a Gifford house himself and has the listing. They also stained the cedar house a sharp, charcoal black and added bathrooms where showers are framed in black tile and floor-to-ceiling windows — “plate-glass windows like Bergdorf Goodman’s,” Petrarca said with a laugh.

A new bathroom nods to the voyeuristic fun of the Pines, where raised houses can feel like stages to perform for the watching neighbors.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

This is quite a shift from when Petrarca first came to the Pines 35 years ago, when “lots of houses didn’t have interior showers,” he said. But he sees the renovation as part of a broader pattern, as the Pines has flipped from a rustic hideaway to luxury destination. Today’s Pines buyers want Gifford’s look — but without the “camping” association, he says. “It’s far from the original, but it’s a much more comfortable home.”

Greenery adds a layer of privacy to the house, even around a new pool that’s heated by solar.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

A hot tub is one of many more luxurious touches.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

The ceiling of the original house shows the lines of Gifford’s original four boxes. This living area once took up two of those boxes but has grown to take over three.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

Gifford’s kitchen ran along only one wall, and he was adamant about not including dishwashers. The renovation upgraded the home for a community where neighbors now often drop in for dinner parties.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

The renovation added two bedrooms.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell

Gifford’s aesthetic is still visible even in new bedrooms, which are much larger than his design, where tiny, cozy bedrooms tended to push the party into larger central areas.
Photo: Kathleen O’Donnell