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Montauk's Stone House: The Edgiest Estate on the East End

People in Stone Houses... This Montauk residence was originally built as a restaurant in the early 19th century.

At the end of Old Montauk Highway, dramatically perched 100 feet above the ocean and just 15 feet from the bluff's edge, lies Stone House, perhaps one of the most unique estates on the East End. The second-story master bedroom is itself a piece de résistance. It features 360-degree views of the lighthouse, Block Island, the stones on the beach, storms that sweep across the sea, the occasional whale, and the rise and fall of the sun and moon. Standing by any window facing the ocean on the second floor, you feel as if you are floating at sea.

If not for the late innovative landscaper Georgina Reid, Stone House would have been washed away many northeasters ago. In 1962, a violent storm slammed into Long Island's Rocky Point North Shore Beach and washed away 10 feet of her land on the bluff, where her modest beach cottage had been built. With her husband, Reid pioneered a method to combat erosion by building a set of terraces, each filled with sea reeds and topped with sand. The hollow stems of the reeds served as tiny pipes that acted like an irrigation system. When they decayed, they blended into the roots of the plantings and held the soil together, like millions of tiny fingers pressing into the earth. She patented her method, called "reed-trench terracing," and wrote a book about it called "How to Hold Up a Bank."

In 1970, Reid used her method to build an erosion-protecting structure at the famous Montauk Point Lighthouse on the eastern tip of Long Island. Using the same techniques, she enforced the sea wall of Stone House. "These two projects show that erosion protection works," says Greg Donahue, who took over maintaining the landscaping of the lighthouse and Stone House after Reid died in 1986. "We created a method that can stabilize this bluff in its place and it's working."

Master of the House Designer Tony Ingrao, a onetime owner of the property, built up into the attic to create a loft-like master bedroom. The ensuite bathroom features a steam shower and Jacuzzi tub overlooking the ocean. Stones from India, France, and Africa were used in the master bathroom floor.

Donahue keeps a close eye on Stone House. On a recent tour of the property, he plucked out a piece of Reid's rotted cedar from the bluff wall, pointing out how the plantings had taken root and were now stronger than the wood. "They don't give out permits for this kind of work anymore," he says. "People don't like the hardening of the shoreline, which is called revetment, but revetment is more true here than in dune geology."

Home and Hearth The current owner bought the house furnished by the previous owner, Tony Ingrao. The 1950s hide-covered armchairs were designed by Jacques Adnet for Hermes.

Natural Charm The current owner installed a custom Viking kitchen. The adjacent dining room features an 18th-century table. Electrical wires are disguised in the ceiling's wooden beams.

The current owner of Stone House, a business executive, bought the three-acre property four years ago for $7.4 million from money manager Alphonse Fletcher Jr., who bought it from interior designer Tony Ingrao in 1999. The executive's deal also included two adjacent properties which have since sold to developer Tom Gessler, who is building a house and a guesthouse. Just adjacent to Gessler's property, Ingrao owns a lot where he is building a stone windmill house. Other neighbors include artist photographer Peter Beard, J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler, real estate developer Bruce Ratner, and hedge-fund manager David "Tiger" Williams.

About 4,000-square-feet, Stone House was originally built as a restaurant in the early 19th century. It was expanded into a home in the 1900s for a female member of the Morgan banking family by Grosvenor Atterbury, an associate of architect Stanford White. Legend has it that the Southampton banking heiress had it restructured as a lovers' retreat. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio allegedly honeymooned there, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono supposedly tried to buy it in the 1970s. It features prominently in Andy Warhol's diaries because his fabled compound, Eothen-purchased last year by Drexler-was located just a few houses away and they share part of an unpaved driveway.

In 1987, Ingrao purchased Stone House, along with 12 surrounding acres, after it had fallen into disarray. He took three years to renovate the property, but then a fire almost destroyed the whole thing in 1991. "The upside of the fire was that having already decorated a house once, you learn what you really like and what you wouldn't do again," Ingrao told Architectural Digest in May 1995. "It's a process of forced refining."

That refining included 17th-century-style mullioned windows and radiant heated French-limestone floors. It feels like a home where Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett might fall in love.

Land's End A steep staircase from the backyard leads down to wooden deck jutting above the beach.

"My wife and I fell in love with this special property based on its colorful history, uniqueness, beauty, and location directly on the ocean," says the current owner. "The sunsets, sunrises, and moonscape over the open seas are just not duplicated anywhere else in the Hamptons."

Donahue doesn't expect that Stone House will ever have to be manually moved back from the bluff. "We have drawn a line in the sand with this place," he says with pride.