September 2007

FEATURES

AFTER MOVING A 19TH-CENTURY HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET, A WAINSCOTT COUPLE CREATE A HOME AND GARDEN APPROPRIATE FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS

While house hunting in the Hamptons a little over 30 years ago, advertising executive (and now actor) Charlie Moss asked his love, TV commercial producer Susan Calhoun, to marry him. After some consideration, she finally agreed. As the nuptials neared, Charlie's house hunting waned. "I couldn't handle getting married and getting a house at the same time," he recalls. Soon after, his new wife, knowing a house would surely follow, bought Moss an old bell on which she engraved the inscription, "I'll always be there"—meaning when he rang the bell, she would appear. Mounted on the main porch of this 19th-century, shingle-style home, that bell has signaled the start of hundreds of meals over the last 30 joyful summers.

In the warm family kitchen, adorned with pine plank floors and a brick fireplace, a black and white photograph from 1880 reveals the house's early history, when it served as the Wainscott post office. Finished with public service, it was used as a farmhouse for several years before it languished, unoccupied. In 1977, the newlyweds bought the house and moved it south across Main Street to its present location on 11 sweeping acres overlooking Wainscott Pond and the Atlantic.

The passing years have brought multiple additions and makeovers, starting with a wraparound porch and attic dormers that were added to the original structure by New York-based architect Tod Williams soon after the move. Later, after baby Mary arrived, the house was supplemented with the addition of a playroom and nursery by architect Kate Gormley, who at age 27 was just starting out. Then baby Sam came along, so Gormley enlarged the nursery and play areas.