REAL ESTATE

INSIDE STORIES BEHIND AREA REAL ESTATE DEALS

Random Harvest
That modern architecture is returning to the Hamptons is an anomaly worth noting. It's happening as a reversal of taste among astoundingly solid young buyers for whom tradition is a random harvest reeking of an older marketplace. They've forsaken anachronisms of chintz, flame stitch and pleated silk shades—the leftovers of harpies and hack shopkeepers, despots of interior design.

Not surprisingly, most examples of the modernist trend can be seen outside of the architecturally conventional, shingle-crazy villages of Southampton or East Hampton.

Instead, try heading over to Sagaponack and Bridgehampton for an eyeful of innovation.

One such standout peers over Daniel's Lane, where a massive concrete wall stretches unconnected to a two-story steel frame. Records show it belongs to Billy Macklowe, son of noted developer Harry. It looks as if it is going to be a statement. We'll see.

The resurrections on Surfside and Midocean in Bridgehampton are other hot spots—without a multi-mullioned window in sight. These were streets in a time warp anyway. Charlie Gwathmey's Wall Street habitation on Surfside is still a stunner but the rest might be likened to worn-out garments from the 1970s and 1980s.

Many East End habitués decry the newcomers here just as stalwart city folk poked fun at the old bridge-and-tunnel crowd, so named generations ago, who flocked to Manhattan from the boroughs for a taste of the high life, which had already gone elsewhere.

Have we been morphed by the B&T crowd after all? Older, wiser and rolling rich?