Private House,
Southampton, NY

This country villa is set in the low grasslands overlooking Taylor Creek in Southampton. Because of tidal fluctuations and storm surges, all new houses here must be set five feet above grade and can have no basements — a requirement which not only improves views over the marshes but underscores the attractiveness of the classical plinth.

The client imagined a neo-classical Russian dacha with St. Petersburg coloration, a precedent similar to the best small country houses of the Virginia Piedmont well known to Jaquelin Robertson; both are instances of Western European classicism reinterpreted in different parts of the world at different times according to cultural and regional circumstances — an architectural language, at once old and new, which travels well.

The Palladian plan is organized around a long axis that passes through the house connecting it to a pool pavilion at one end and a garage and staff apartment at the other. The main space of the house is a 25-foot high living room with fireplaces at each end, which is topped by a lantern and opens into a winter garden; a room filled with changing patterns of light. Two-story blocks flank this high room: one containing a dining room, pantry, and kitchen with two bedrooms above; the other a library, stair hall, and two smaller guest rooms on the ground floor above which is the master bedroom suite. The play of scale and three dimensional articulation make the villa appear smaller.

The exterior of the main house has wide horizontal rusticated planking painted a faded St. Petersburg saffron. The pool house is sheathed with a trellis of round, vertical dowels which cast shadows and help dematerialize the walls of this small pavilion. A raised seam copper roof, now with a dusty green patina, helps tie the villa to the color palette of its superb East End setting. (Elle Decoration (France)/Marianne Haas photos)

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