Dans Papers - June 1, 2007 - Performance Art

When our children grow up and leave home to get on with their lives, it does leave a certain emptiness in the house. The basketball hoop out back has grown silent. The long slide the kids would jump on to splash down into the pool screaming and laughing hasn't had anybody on it in quite some time. The bedrooms are empty. What are parents supposed to do about all that?

In many ways, it's a sad time. But eventually, the parents left behind come to the conclusion that the page has to be turned and a new chapter begun. Also, perhaps, there is a certain amount of summing up to be done. What did all this mean? Did it turn out all right?

As I write this, I am thinking of a woman I don't really know all that well -- Adelaide de Menil -- a photographer and oil heiress living in East Hampton whom I have met maybe six times over a span of thirty years. It may be somewhat presumptuous of me to be writing about her here, but she is who has come to mind. I think Adelaide de Menil's life has been a work of art. I don't know if I could say that about anybody else I know. And it continues to be a work of art.

In 1973, I met Adelaide de Menil out on the Montauk Highway in East Hampton in front of the post office photographing a house that was being slowly towed down the highway. It was her house. And she stood by the side of the highway with a movie camera on a tripod with the shutter set to take one frame every few seconds. Play it at high speed and the house, which would take much of the afternoon to go by, would seem to be going by at maybe fifteen miles an hour.

The occasion for all of this was the purchase by Ms. de Menil of this old, seventeenth-century colonial saltbox home known as the Purple House from next door to the East Hampton Library for the purpose of moving it four miles down the road to the 40 acres of oceanfront property on Further Lane she and her husband Ed Carpenter had just bought.

Property on Further Lane was relatively expensive then, though surely not as expensive as it is today. It was grand space, with the sound of the surf and the sea and the smells of salt sea air and the views of vast potato farms and occasional fogs rolling across the landscape. It was a place for the wealthy to build vast estates. But that is not what Ms. de Menil and Mr. Carpenter wanted to do. They wanted to live in the Purple House and perhaps assemble a grouping of 300-year-old homes elsewhere on the property. They'd have horses in the barn, an artists' studio, a garden house and a pool house.

And so that is what they did. All together, they moved twelve buildings to their property by having house movers pick them up and take them there. Many local people complained that the Carpenters were going to do harm to these local treasures, or at the very least take them out from public view. But in the early 1970s when all this took place, saving historic places was not the priority it is today. The complaints died away.

For the next thirty years, she and her husband lived there and enjoyed their family and friends there. I'd see them occasionally, at one party or another. We'd say hello, but that was about all. I was not among their circle of friends. Indeed, as a local newspaper publisher, there was probably a need to keep me at arm's length for another reason -- who knows what I might write?

In 2005, this couple began to consider downsizing. Forty acres is a lot of space.

At about that time, a man named Ron Baron bought about twelve acres of property next door and told them if they ever wanted to sell, they should contact him. Properties like that of the de Menils, along that four-mile row of mansions on the ocean on Further Lane, were coming on the market in the $25 million range. Baron said he'd pay that and more. And the reason was that the carpenter parcel was about twice the size of any other along that stretch. It was something to think about.

What the Carpenters thought was that they had all these historic old buildings on their property -- these were the only structures there -- and if they did sell the property, what would happen to them? The topic never came up directly, but Mr. Baron, as he hinted he might pay as much as $50 million for the property, said that of course he would want to make his own mark on the property. And he wasn't interested in history.

The couple certainly did not need the money. But perhaps, they thought, their time there was at an end. Would there be ANYBODY who would care for these historic buildings?

In late 2006, the couple got the idea that they should donate these buildings back to the community. For thirty years they had kept them in perfect, historic condition. Maybe they did belong back in public view.

The first house that they offered up was the very first house that they had brought to Further Lane - the Purple House. They contacted the East Hampton Library. And to their shock, the Library board, with numerous board members dissenting, voted not to take it.

At this point, a Swedish industrialist named Robert Weil made an offer on this property for more than Baron had offered. Baron offered higher. And then there was another offer higher than those of either Baron or Weil. The couple thought that there might be an awful lot of good they could do with what appeared to be as much as $80 million.

This newspaper got wind of these offers last year and I did write about them. But Adelaide called me up to scold me and she told me there were offers but she hadn't yet decided to accept any of them and I shouldn't be writing about what I don't know about. But yes, they would be returning the historically priceless buildings to the community.

What I didn't know at the time, but others did, was that the bidding on this property was now approaching $100 million and none of the bidders wanted anything on the property but the land, free and clear of the buildings. The buildings would HAVE to be off the property. Probably within a year. You know, there are unknowns to be contended with in our lives on this planet. Who is rich one day could be poor the next. The economy could crash. The offers could be withdrawn. And yes, now it was an urgent matter to get these buildings off the property.

Among those who did know what was going on -- besides the real estate brokers who were dizzy from these numbers being bandied about -- was the East Hampton Town Supervisor, Bill McGintee. He went to the Town Board and explained the situation and said he thought that most of these houses, at least temporarily, could be brought to the ten-acre front lawn of Town Hall and then could be given out from there. But at least the property would be cleared. The Town Board agreed with this idea, it was presented to the couple and they accepted.

And so it was that I got invited to a party, a final party at the home of Adelaide de Menil and Ted Carpenter, in celebration of the latest book written by adventurer and author Peter Matthessein of Sagaponack. Chris and I had champagne in the main barn that had been converted to a studio living room, we walked the property, we thanked Ted and Adelaide for inviting us and we thought about what was to come.

Today, the couple has moved off this property to another smaller home not too far away. Six of those buildings are now on the front lawn of the Town Hall and are to be moved no further. Architects from the firm of A. M. Stern have designed a plan to make these homes an integral part of Town Hall. One will be a supervisor's office, another a meeting room, another a councilmen's room and so forth and so on. Glass causeways will connect them. The new main entrance to the Town Hall will be in one of them. And behind these buildings, the current town hall, a very nondescript brick building with a flat roof, will simply become an addition to what is out front.

The remaining half dozen buildings have also found new homes. One has already been brought to the historic park in Amagansett to be part of the Miss Amelia complex. Another has also been moved and now is at the Mulford Farm in East Hampton, opposite the green. Another is to be moved to a site behind a church in Springs. And still another is to be moved to the Town Marine Museum on Bluff Road in Amagansett.

One would suppose that Adelaide de Menil and Ted Carpenter would be quite sad at the end of their time on this property. But when you think about it, in the end, that is what happens to all of us. We move on. What we leave behind gets picked over or thrown out. There are new beginnings.

During the moving of the six homes from the property to Town Hall in late March -- a project that was done all at one time on one particular day -- Adelaide was to be seen everywhere along the way, wearing a distinctive black greatcoat and hat, asking about this and that, noting obstacles and opportunities and essentially getting herself in harm's way to backseat drive the move by Davis House Movers the four miles from the property to Town Hall. Ted was there too, but he just stood there for the most part off to one side, his hands clasped behind him, looking out grandly as events, orchestrated by his wife, unfolded in front of him.

I did speak to her then and she was in a cheerful, excited mood and was flushed with excitement as the day progressed. A helicopter hovering overhead was up there, she said, so her nephew could take moving pictures of the event for posterity. He was up there almost all day.

The cost of moving all of these homes, which surely must have been a million dollars or more, was paid for by Adelaide and Ted. In addition, Adelaide and Ted are contributing $2 million toward an endowment that would provide for the future upkeep of the ones at Town Hall.

The work of art? Well, I'd like to consider it as a sort of performance art, a ballet of bringing all these houses over to the property at the beginning of a time when so many historic buildings were being torn down in the name of progress. And ending with the ballet of bringing all these buildings back for the public to see.

When Adelaide and Ted look back upon it, that all by itself is their legacy. They borrowed some houses and they returned them. There will be no historic markers to indicate where these houses once stood in this town. There will be the houses themselves, on other sites perhaps -- many colonial homes have been moved half a dozen times over the years -- and these homes will be available for Ted and Adelaide to visit, cherish and help maintain. As for what was there, well, it is now utterly gone, finally and no doubt about it. But what a legacy. For Ted and Adelaide, it is a new day.

As for what will happen to the property, well, Ron Baron won the property at a price of $105 million, an amount about three times as much as the highest price ever paid for a home in the Hamptons. The parcel is clear. The slate is clean. And another new day begins.