Hampton Style - August 17, 2007

THE WHITE HOUSE
A classic Stanford White House in East Hampton gets a modern makeover

by Deborah Schoeneman

Jeffrey Collé has been building houses in the Hamptons for 29 years, but he's never before moved a Stanford White house and given it a facelift. Collé's latest project, a massive renovation of a saltbox-style Stanford White house on Georgica Pond in East Hampton, is perhaps his most ambitious--and expensive. The house, with an old barn guesthouse, sits on two acres bordering a 16-acre preserve controlled by The Nature Conservancy. Architect Richard Meier's house is visible across the meadow, and neighbors across the pond include Ron Perelman, Steven Spielberg, and Courtney Ross.

On a hot afternoon in August, there were a few dozen workmen putting finishing touches inside, like laying down French limestone floors and French-oak paneling. "I wanted to keep White's details, like the way the roof sweeps, and his scale and proportions, especially in the big room," says Collé, who owns JC Construction Management in East Hampton and lives in a house he built in Wainscott. "There's little left of the old house but it's about the same size." The renovated house is about 12,000 square feet, with over 200 feet directly on Georgica Pond, which may as well be called Golden Pond for all the expensive property around it.

In the past, Collé has renovated some of the area's most historic homes like the Maidstone Hall, a large white home on Ocean Avenue in East Hampton. His clients include Alec Baldwin, Billy Joel, Donna Karan, and Anne Eisenhower Flottl. Two years ago, Collé bought the White house, which was asking $12.5 million, from Barbara Dubow and her husband, architect A.Eugene Kohn of the Kohn Pedersen Fox firm, who wanted to design something new in upstate New York. Her previous husband, Arthur Dubow, a lawyer and businessman who passed away in 1999, had owned it for 30 years. He bought it from muralist Buffie Johnson and her husband, Gerald Sykes, a critic, lecturer, and novelist, who had bought it from the original owner, impressionist painter Edward Simmons, a close friend of White's, who had it built around 1900 as an artist's studio, complete with a 30-foot-high room for painting, which is now the living room.

When Collé bought the house, he had it picked up and turned 90 degrees so the windows faced west instead of north, for a sunset view over the pond. Moving any house is extremely expensive and this repositioning cost around half a million dollars.

The artists had liked the soft northern light, but Collé thinks the new orientation dramatically increases the property's value. That, plus the high-end renovation puts the price tag at a whopping $40 million when it hits the market later this month. Luxury amenities include a Turkish limestone back terrace with an infinity pool and Jacuzzi, fireplaces, and marble bathtubs.

"Jeffrey recognized bones there, and took away the barnacles that had clouded the vision of a cool spot and a cool house," says Sotheby's broker Frank Newbold, who sold Collé the house and will be one of the listing brokers when it goes on the market. Collé was one of the first people Newbold brought to the property: "When I showed it to him it hadn't been updated in decades, and Jeffrey had the vision to bring it out again."

The site was once a farm on 100 acres and it has a pre-existing zoning that allows for a high house. The main house will have five bedrooms and the guesthouse will have two. The house can be finished to a buyer's specifications, so it's a bit like a spec house, though Collé may finish it as he sees fit.

But is $40 million a realistic asking price? Newbold says it's fair for the esteemed area and the high-end renovation.

"White's house was a very rural retreat. It didn't even have heat," says Newbold. "But the end result of what Jeffrey's doing is going to be a very high level of finishing. It's not an outrageous asking price." As for the value of the White provenance, Newbold says, "I'm not sure if it adds value, but it puts it at the top of people's list if they are looking for something unique. It makes it more special."