1 Ekstract House, a.k.a. Villa Amore SAGAPONACK Not for the faint of heart. This 8,000-square-foot home rests partly on stilts, its components connected by walkways. The master bath is a glass cylinder – you got a problem with that? Designed by Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas and completed in 1991, the house – on the market for $9.5 million – has a waterfall and a pool. That structure on the left, the one that looks like a gazebo on a tripod? It’s a gazebo on a tripod.
2 Fairfield Pond Lane House SAGAPONACK Did they ever think of calling this one “Tinswept”? Reportedly, the sun’s rays, when reflected off the corrugated stainless steel, incinerated flora in the immediate vicinity. Inside, it’s surprisingly cool, says Jennifer Rubell, whose family owns the house; but, she adds, “when it rains, it really rains hard.”
3 Elysium Castle, a.k.a. Dragon’s Head SOUTHAMPTON Here, the simple question “Where’s the bathroom?” can elicit eighteen different sets of directions. There are, within its 55,000 square feet and across its ten acres, 60 rooms, 16 bedrooms, 18 fireplaces, a movie theater, a pool, a tennis court, and a saltwater lagoon. The oceanfront mansion was built by the DuPonts in 1927, was redone in 1981, and is for sale for $45 million. Comes with “distinctive turrets” – as opposed to the kind that just blend into the background.
4 Alice Lawrence House, a.k.a. “TWA Terminal” EAST HAMPTON Proceed to boarding gate. The former Alice Lawrence house is 17,000 square feet of highly polished concrete and steel, with a roofline that’s an apparent extension of the old TWA terminal at Kennedy. Lee Radziwill tried to stop construction of the soaring two-story ornamental wall because it blocked her view of Pink Beach. An investment banker bought the house not long ago for $11.5 million – skycaps not included.
5The Ark House WATER MILL Designed and hand-built by “integral artist” and “architectural futurist” Mihai Popa (a.k.a. Nova), this remarkable bit of barrel-shaped, art-filled, recycled-wood whimsy is deceptively large – 2,600 square feet. Still, the house “has a very small footprint on the earth, only 800 square feet,” says Tundra Wolf, who lives there with Nova and a third partner, Luna. “The idea is, you leave more room for the lungs of the planet.” Benefits and weddings are already held here, and, Wolf says, they hope someday to open the property – 100 acres in all – to the public on weekends. “We have sheep and horses and ducks as well as the art,” she says. “Children love it.”
6 Pollak House EAST HAMPTON This Joseph Durso designed home, essentially equidistant from the beach and from Jerry Seinfeld (depending on the comedian’s exact movements), replaced a glass shoebox in the mid-nineties. “So I have this huge telescope – that’s what the dome is,” explains owner Richard Pollak, who has the house on the market for $14 million. The observatory reflects only one of Pollak’s hobbies. There are also fossils. One, on a stairwell wall, is sixteen feet high and ten feet wide. “It’s of a 50 million-year-old fish,” he says. “I have a 250 million-year-old crocodile on another wall. I tell people it’s my mother-in-law.”
Click here to get back to the Summer Fun main page!