Covering a real estate listing every week makes it hard to pick just a few favorites. Not that I can’t make up my mind, but I like something about each home I’ve featured. And some of them I am so over the moon about that I am genuinely in a state of despair that I don’t have the resources or lifestyle to throw over my current life and move into a shingled cottage, or a super cool loft or a village Victorian—all the kinds of homes that make the North Fork unique.
Though condensing a year of virtual house tours into a small list is nearly impossible, here are five that spoke to me this year, in order of time travel. If I had the money, I’d buy them all!
A chef’s home in East Marion. Even without knowing the provenance of this home, previously owned by Rosa de Carvalho Ross, the beloved North Fork chef who passed away this summer, I was drawn to remarkable house for its simple beauty in a graceful setting. I’m a preservationist buff, so right away, this early 17th-century jewel called out to me. I love the overall scale of the house, and how the rooms are in lovely proportion. It is nothing fancy (except its pedigree) but it is warm, elegant and understated and it just says “home.”
Very Victorian in Laurel. I’m not an over the top kind of person, but I was in love with the splendid details and craftsmanship of this perfect village Victorian. This place had me at the front porch with its leaded windows and turret! Inside, I was charmed—if not swooning—over the original details that thankfully survived since 1879: the carved arch and doorways, rich hand-inlaid floors, tiled fireplace, filigree details. I even approved of the modernized kitchen, kept simple with dove-gray cabinets and white subway tiles. The enclosed back porch was really the cherry on top of this luscious cake.
A Georgian estate in Southold. I do love an iconic property and this one delivered in spades. This home ingeniously combined the carriage house and stables of the former 40-acre waterfront Cosden estate, once a grand waterfront Georgian mansion. The result is a home with two distinct characters: one half being a modern, open, well-lighted place packed with comforts and charisma—and retaining many histo4ic details—and the other half the original stables refurbished into living and leisure spaces. They are joined by a courtyard that gives the setting a regal air.
Lofty and light in Greenport. If you can’t live in TriBeCa or SoHo, this is the next best thing, but without all the noise. I loved the ingenuity behind converting this industrial space—a former commercial laundry from the 1930s—into a cool and creative loft that combines style, rusticity and original details. The home is greatly helped by the owners’ aesthetics, which turned the raw space into an imaginative fun house with a sophisticated undertone. I liked how it’s so unassuming from the outside, and then you walk in and bam! Wide open with spectacular light and a flexible floor plan that allows for even more creativity.
MCM in Greenport. Built on the cusp of the ’60s turning into the ’70s, this home, set back from the road and ringed by trees, looks ready for takeoff—appropriate for the times, which were the height of the “Golden Age of Travel.” The interior is as dramatic as the exterior, with levels and mezzanines providing bird’s eye views into other corners of the house and into the yard and tree line beyond. I loved that, despite the many large open-view windows, the house feels very private and protected. The kitchen is a study in efficient design.
