Open Houses

Last month, Hamptons 20th Century Modern, a nonprofit “promoting greater awareness and conservancy of residences designed in the modern American vernacular on Long Island, New York,” invited locals and tourists alike to join the cause in person, on a tour of four homes plus a synagogue. Exactly why these modern homes were in such dire need of awareness and conservancy became clear as we marched with valor through the works of Andrew Geller, Norman Jaffe, and Harry Bates: they’re simply too small for the Hamptons of now.

“I think people are sort of overdoing their vacation houses,” the architect Forrest Frazier told me, referring to the mega-mansions cropping up in the area. We were standing inside Andrew Geller’s whimsical Antler House, which Frazier’s office restored in 2019, going back to the original 1968 drawings to recover funky details like the owl’s eye windows. It’s on the market for $2.7 million. In the eyes of prospective buyers, the land is more valuable than the architecture. For the house to be preserved, Frazier mused, it would have to be moved to the s…