Dan's Papers - August 17, 2007 - Brownstone On The Dunes

Here's the dream. You get in your bathing suit, put together a picnic and a blanket, a portable radio and some suntan lotion, and you get in the car with your friends and head down to the beach. On your right, as you drive down is a potato field with a farmer seated on a tractor, tending his crops. On your left is a horse farm, then more potato fields, then a narrow dirt road heading to the dunes at the back of the beach.

There is something odd on those dunes rising thirty-two feet into the air on the sand dune is a...is it possible... a New York City Brownstone? You park, all get out of the car and, with all your beach paraphernalia, walk over to have a better look. Indeed, it is a brownstone. There is the long flight of the front stoop leading to the beautiful front door about ten feet off the level of the beach grass. There is a basement level with small square windows with bars on them to discourage intruders, and there is a grand second floor soaring upward to a magnificent cornice that juts out and overlooks the entire establishment. Other than that, there are just the dunes, some beach grass, and for miles and miles just potato fields at the back of the beach.

Every morning, five days a week, Andy Gangloff and Jim Berkhoff leave their homes in Northport, Long Island, and drive together in an old pickup truck to their job in Bridgehampton fifty miles to the east. The men have been doing this for two months now, and they expect that the work might last for just another week or two. That is the schedule, anyway.

Jim and Andy discuss the project as they head toward Bridgehampton, and they discuss it again at the end of the day as they head home. It is an interesting job they have, involving welding, carpentry, painting. But then, as handymen on carpenter's they have come to expect interesting projects from their boss, set designer Peter Larkin. Although this one, you might say, takes the cake.

The pickup truck heads up on Hayground Road in Bridgehampton, and then down a long dirt road through some potato fields leading to a very large red barn that is known by those familiar with it as "the hanger."

The men get out of the pickup, open the front door to the place with a key, and then enter a vast space that in more recent years was used as a potato barn, but had originally served in the 1920s and 1930s as an airplane hangar for the biplanes of wealthy summer residents. Howards, Stinsons and Cessnas once stood inside here. Now there is just a big open space smelling of potato dust, two potato harvesters parked at one end of the room, an old 1964 Lincoln Continental, a Chris Craft yacht on a trailor behind it, and the project.

The project is laid out on the floor. It consists of a giant wooden frame, eighteen feet wide by thirty two feet long, arrange with rectangles for windows, another rectangle for a door, and a place where a New York City Brownstone cornice can be hung at a later time. The men will paint this frame blue on this day. It will be blue because when the brownstone is fully erected, the color blue of the wooden frame will blend in with the blue sky over the ocean beyond.

Set designer Peter Larkin has a house in Sag Harbor, an apartment in New York City, and a fine reputation on Broadway. He has done the sets for Bob Fosse (who also has a summer home in the Hamptons), and among his other triumphs have been the set for TOOTSIE, NIGHT HAWKS and DANCIN'. With success has come financial stability and, among other things, a glorious Bugatti motor car.

Peter Larking wanted to keep his Bugatti in a garage at his house in Sag Harbor but then his house did not have a garage. He also wanted to keep his magnificent automobile where he could look at it if he wanted to. And so he combined a few things. He built a glass greenhouse on his property and parked the Bugatti inside of it. The Bugatti was protected from the elements but at the same time looked like a wedding present from Tiffany's all wrapped up in cellophane. The town fathers were somehow too thick to understand all this, and so they visited him and told him to take the car out. If it was a greenhouse then put flowers in it. But if it was a garage then announce it as a building and get a zoning variance. There were rules and regulations that had to be followed and this didn't seem to fit in anywhere. It was all very confusing.

The BROWNSTONE ON THE DUNES idea has been going on inside of Peter Larkin's head for the better part of several years just waiting for an opportune moment to get out. At the present time, it is just a project under construction, a work in progress, which Larkin would rather not talk about until it is finished. What if it is never finished? Maybe he'll just tear it all up and write it off. Maybe it will never happen after all. He doesn't want to be in the position of announcing something and then never following through.

At the present time, however, the two carpenters are hard at work in the hangar near Haygound Road. They have a second pickup truck in there, and on this second pickup, they have welded together a long metal bridgework that is just by coincidence thirty two feet long. This bridgework is mounted on the top of that pickup, parallel to the ground, and it is constructed with a swivel apparatus attached to it. Pull a long metal chain and, believe it or not the entire bridgework swivels ninety degrees into a vertical position at the back of the pickup. In concept, it is somewhere along the same lines as a dump truck.

The telephone rings in the hangar where the pickup truck with the bridgework is parked. You want to rent a brownstone? You want it tonight, for your party? We'll be right over. The men shove the cornice and the flight of stairs onto the back of the pickup under the bridgework, start the engine of the truck and drive off down the dirt road of the potato field. They are a neat little package, ready to assemble into a brownstone facade in a matter of minutes. Brownstone at your service.

What is to become of this project? It was originally planned that the brownstone would be unveiled (assembled?) at the opening of the "Environment" exhibit at the Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton on June 11. Technical problems involving the steep angle of the Benson's driveway, the painting of the Brownstone stage set flats, and the ease of movement of the bridgework have delayed things. Perhaps the first showing of BROWNSTONE ON THE DUNES will be at the end of Ocean Road in Bridgehampton, a stunning sight has on drives down to the beach. Perhaps it will be on the front lawn of Dan's Papers for a while, or in the potato field on the Montauk Highway adjacent to the Post Office. Or perhaps the brownstone will loom in the singular splendor in the potato field at the end of Peter's Pond Lane in Sagaponack.

Or maybe the brownstone will turn up in your backyard on the morning of your next birthday party. Surprise!