A Seamless Whole

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Every once in a while one comes across a house that is notable not for its extravagance or its inventiveness or its challenge to this or that contemporary concept of living. A house that, despite the luxury of its finishes and size is, fundamentally, simple—a true home built to sustain a family through the years. Such a house—and this major new achievement by Shope Reno Wharton is certainly such a house—does not rely for its effect on any single detail or dramatic moment; instead, in place of grand gestures or flash, there is the steady accumulation of intelligent decisions, eyes always on scale and proportion and the effect of carefully curated materials, bound by good sense, adding up, in the words of the project's interior designer, Joseph Kremer, to "a tasteful whole."

Typical of the work of Shope Reno Wharton, the house, out of town a little in the estate section of Southampton, is rooted in venerable principles but open to modern ideals. Kremer calls it a "sporty Victorian"; Bernard Wharton—who tapped firm associate John Gassett as the project architect—refers to it as simply "a Shingle Style house, very much in keeping with its environs."

Immediately apparent is the light touch the designer has used in the house's fabrics—somewhat earthy textures in buffs and blues—and the quality of the furnishings.

The environs here are a smattering of dignified older Shingle Style houses behind the area's signature hedgerows, several more recent and less successful efforts and the potato-field flat plains that characterize the East End of Long Island. The house hugs that flat land under a broad roof; every detail of the massing—simple, ganged doublehung windows and impeccable, close-seamed and ornament-free shingle work—reinforces the horizontal feel. Contrast comes only in the playfully battered chimneys and the striking center-axis accent of a Palladian window that segues into the hip roof as a barrel-vaulted dormer. It is not an unprecedented interpretation of the traditional arched-window motif, but neither is it a common one. As such, it serves as a perfect symbol for the whole Wharton stresses that the design does not cleave abjectly to the past, and indeed, there's a salutary whiff of the new throughout. "I've been called a modernist in a traditionalist's body," the architect says. "And there's some truth to that. I like modern spaces that are flowing and open, but I prefer a traditional vocabulary."

That mix—traditional language, in this case based on a simplified Tuscan order, and modern flow—is evident upon entry. After passing through a clever little space that serves as an elegant mudroom—three steps deep, paneled in dark wood—one enters the dazzling main hall of the house, two stories high and filled with light from the Palladian centerpiece above. That window, with bands of lesser lights alongside it, works brilliantly to illuminate the dignified stair that wraps up and around the formal entrance. Kremer has placed here a tremendous brass chandelier, a rewired piece designed for oil and candles, that holds one's interest through the long ascent.

Immediately apparent is the light touch Kremer has used in the house's fabrics—somewhat earthy textures in buffs and blues—and the quality of the furnishings, nearly all of which are antiques. Early in the campaign, Kremer and his clients—a New York real estate executive and his wife—traveled to London, where they spent a week scouring the shops. "When we went to London," Kremer says, "the plans were in place, and the rooms were working perfectly." That made the job of furnishing them all the more difficult, but the products of that busy week —over 30 pieces, from a 15-foot dining table to a pair of Regency consoles, filling an entire shipping container—work to ground the flowing spaces.

Just past the entrance, one finds the main transverse axis of the house, a gallery anchored on one end by doors to a guest room and the library, and on the other by the beautifully integrated kitchen. The living room is straight ahead and can be traversed in only a few strides for those in a hurry to emerge into the backyard, landscaped in a pleasingly clumpy English manner—from scratch; there wasn't a tree on the property—by Edmund D. Hollander, of New York.

The house is rooted in venerable principles but open to modern ideals.

But one would never rush through this room; underpinned by a custom French rug in an ethereal blue, it has all the interest of a packed Victorian parlor and none of the density that might lead to claustrophobia. "I wanted a Victorian reference," Kremer notes. "But with the new fabrics and colors, it's truly a house for today." Opening off the living room are the gorgeous dining room with its walls of grisaille French Romantic fantasias, and the library with adjoining billiard room, finished in a striking limed oak, walls and ceilings rough and blond. Here a latent nautical theme appears (the ocean is but a few blocks away). It is most evident there, but that character, a simple, tidy tightness , can be found as well in the kitchen, which looks ready for efficient use.

It is in the kitchen that the modernist hiding within Bernard Wharton has emerged—not in the detailing but in the planning. The room functions as a threshold to a series of more intimate family spaces in train a modest breakfast room; a sitting room, reached through a gracious portal; and, through twin glass doors, a screen porch, expressed as a semidetached gazebo, sumptuously upholstered and equipped with crystal trays on every table, ready for the ashes of fine cigars. Not surprisingly, this is where the family takes most of its meals in summer.

Says the architect, "I've been called a modernist in a traditionalist's body."

As the adapted Palladian window fixes the center of the front façade and identifies the entrance, a matching window on the rear façade signals the location of the master bedroom on the second floor. Fittingly, it offers the best view out over the property—the broad lawn bordered by clustered brush and flower beds, the clever little poolhouse and tennis court beyond. Also on the second floor are an office, still giving off the sweet smell of wood oil, a room for the residents' teenage son and a generous guest room fitted out, Kremer says, like "a room at an old hotel."

It's a sentiment that Bernard Wharton would welcome. In creating a house with both traditional flavor and a modern flow, the architect was trying to achieve a certain timelessness. "We want our homes to look like they've always been there," he says. "Like they're just melting into the landscape."