The back of 4 Baiting Hollow Road in East Hampton.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The architect R. Scott Bromley is known for beach houses — specifically, the 100 or so homes that he helped design across Fire Island, which play off the work of his design hero, Horace Gifford. But he actually started building vacation houses in the Hamptons back when he still had a day job working for Philip Johnson and before he broke out on his own and made his name co-designing Studio 54 in 1977. Bromley’s first house in the Hamptons — a two-story box of cedar and sliding glass doors that faced a simple rectangle of pool — is now almost unrecognizable, thanks to a 2005 renovation. The second, on the other hand, is still pure Bromley — an unfussy playpen of clean lines, natural materials, and unexpected moments of fun, like a catwalk over the living room and a peephole window into a bathroom. “I was a baby architect,” Bromley told me last week from his home in Fire Island (a Gifford restoration), “but that house would stand up today as a beach house I would design.”
Bromley’s first house in East Hampton, from 1965, before a 2005 renovation.
Photo: Bromley Caldari Architects
4 Baiting Hollow Road, from 1972.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
Now 86, Bromley has outlived the couple who commissioned him to build 4 Baiting Hollow Road —Joseph Roman, an interior designer, died in 2001, and Whitney Chase died in 1988. Bromley remembers they wanted a grand, two-story living area and a dining room separate from the kitchen — requirements for excellent parties. He built them a set of interlocking cedar and glass boxes, whose exposed joinery and simple lines are very much in the Gifford style at a grander scale. (It was East Hampton, after all.) The front entrance leads to a foyer, which opens out into that two-story living area with bedrooms above it.
A disciple of Horace Gifford, Bromley lined up exposed cedar planks to form a clean, simple pattern.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The showstopper is a grid of glass windows, their square panes joined with a cross-hatch of cedar two-by-fours, which continues its grid onto the ceiling. The floorboards are set at 45-degree angle, a Bromley innovation that he tried after realizing he disliked walking barefoot along the grout-y lines of bare boards. “I love walking across boards, but I don’t like walking up and down them, particularly.” A visitor taking the obvious track through the room — from the entrance off the foyer to the sliding glass doors out to the pool in the opposite corner — moves against the stripes, and the pattern continues outdoors, where the same angles frame the pool.
Steps off the living room (left) lead down to the pool, where the boards continue at the same angle.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
Off the kitchen is a breakfast room that leads out to a deck.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The house is composed of nestled boxes, but the dining room and the breakfast nook each have curved walls that encircle large tables. Upstairs, both of these semicircles are capped with private balconies: One extends off the home’s original primary suite, the other off the larger guest room. In 2003, Bromley added a third semicircle to the house, at the end of an addition on the ground floor. (The current owners, who chose to remain private, added a fourth bedroom downstairs with its own private deck and en-suite bathroom.) Fans of Gifford’s sexy voyeurism and open showers will see his influence in the bathrooms: A bath off a guest room has a shower in the center, capped with a skylight. A bath on the ground floor has peekaboo windows that face the front walkway.
Off the guest bedroom with a balcony is an en-suite bathroom with a shower at the center that sits under a skylight.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
Agent Esteban Gomez says the house channels “Bromley’s sense of humor,” which is not exactly standard for this posh nook, now known as Georgica Estates. “It’s so out of the norm,” Gomez says. “It feels like a house from the Pines that was brought over here.”
Price: $7.375 million
Specs: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
Extras: Pool, front and back deck, two-car garage, office, basement, shed
5-minute driving radius: East Hampton Main Beach, The Hedges Inn, Red Horse Market
Listed by: Esteban Gomez and Lori Schiaffino, Compass
Unlike other houses in Georgica Estates, the house isn’t surrounded by massive hedges.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The walk up the drive to the main entrance gives visitors a peek through slim, rectangular windows (left) into the downstairs bathroom.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The front door leads into a foyer.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The view from inside the entrance. Stairs lead down to a basement and up to three of the bedrooms. Ahead is the main living area.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The floorboards follow a 45-degree angle, leading from the entrance of the room to a sliding glass door down to the pool.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
A look back at the house.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The house sits on 1.4 acres on a corner lot, with mature trees that block out views of the neighbors in megamansions.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
A deck off a downstairs bedroom (right) looks over the pool.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
Off the great room is a formal dining room.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
Bromley remembered that the original owners, Joe Roman and Whitney Chase, wanted a separate dining room to entertain.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The dining room has a slim view of the pool and a back deck.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
A kitchen on the other side of the dining room has been updated, but its bones are recognizable to Bromley, who remembered this was his first time putting an island in the kitchen, which he repeated.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
Off the breakfast nook is a small informal sitting area.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The view of the deck off the breakfast room from the back. To the right is the wing with the semi-circular dining room. Above it is the primary bedroom with a private balcony.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The stairs lead to a catwalk over the living area (right).
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The view down from the catwalk includes a sliver of the pool.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The original primary bedroom is off the catwalk and has an en-suite bathroom, two closets, and a private balcony.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
One of the two original guest bedrooms upstairs also has a balcony.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The downstairs bedroom that Bromley added in 2003 is now the largest, but it is still designed to blend in. It has a back deck and a semi-circular sitting area.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The house is on a corner lot that’s 1.4 acres and includes a separate two-car garage, a shed, and landscaped gardens.
Photo: Lena Yaremenko
The house from above.
Photo: Harris Allen