Glenn Rice’s journey to owning a household on Hearth Island, N.Y., commenced unexpectedly in Boston and was propelled, surprisingly, by his enjoy of theater.
In September 2017, Mr. Rice, a serious estate agent, visited Boston to see a friend complete in the opening night time of the enjoy “WARHOLCAPOTE.” At a meal afterward, he befriended Rob Roth, the playwright who wrote the present.
“We just started out conversing and acquired together like gangbusters,” said Mr. Rice, 49. “So at the conclude of the night, he claimed, ‘You should appear out and stay with me in Fireplace Island. I imagine you are going to like it.’”
The future summer, Mr. Rice took Mr. Roth up on the offer you and discovered that he favored Mr. Roth’s getaway in the Pines very a lot in truth. But as he strolled together the boardwalk, it was another dwelling that commanded his interest: a huge, pyramid-formed making with cedar shingles on 3 sides and a soaring triangular wall of steel and glass on the fourth.
It was pretty much as if a big mock-up of I.M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramid had washed up on the beach front.
Intrigued, Mr. Rice started asking all around and figured out that the dwelling was owned by Jeff Mahshie, a trend and costume designer. So when Mr. Rice’s friends encouraged him to inquire for a tour, he scarcely hesitated prior to walking about.
Mr. Mahshie answered and welcomed him inside of — and Mr. Rice could not consider his eyes as he took in the sweeping see around sand dunes to the ocean and the bay.
“We wander in, and it’s just amazing,” Mr. Rice claimed.
The property was built by Julio Kaufman, an Argentine architect, in the early 1960s. Then in 2001, the writer Paul Rudnick bought it and employed another architect, Hal Hayes, to update and grow it. It was Mr. Hayes who extra the metal-and-glass wall, and who reconfigured the inside to make the leading degree an open up dwelling-and-eating area with a kitchen area and the decreased stage an expansive main suite. Exterior, Mr. Hayes included a poolside guesthouse comprising a few connected boxes with pyramidal roofs.
Mr. Rice marveled at the compound, engaged Mr. Mahshie in discussion about scripts he spied on tables and last but not least instructed him that he was fortunate to reside in this kind of a spectacular property.
“And he claimed, ‘Actually, I’m thinking of advertising,’” Mr. Rice recalled.
Mr. Rice took place to be in the approach of advertising his Harlem brownstone, which would offer him with the cash to buy the household. Again in Manhattan, a several days afterwards, “we achieved for lunch in TriBeCa and did a handshake offer,” Mr. Rice mentioned, immediately after agreeing to a price tag of $1.32 million.
“I just fell in appreciate with the dwelling and assumed every thing about it — including the approach by which I was receiving it — was astounding,” he stated.
Immediately after closing in December 2018, he essential to furnish the property, but he was organized for that, way too: An aficionado of style and design, Mr. Rice runs a aspect company known as Supervision, acquiring and selling vintage midcentury-modern-day home furniture and add-ons. For the residing room, he brought in a pair of teak-and-cane sofas intended by Peter Hvidt and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen in the late 1950s, furthermore a pair of slouchy armchairs with lacquered wooden frames and blue suede upholstery from the 1970s. For the main suite, he set up a Norwegian Westnofa rosewood bed room established from the 1960s and vintage French resin benches with multicolored geometric bases.
“Pretty a lot everything is from close to the similar time interval as the residence,” Mr. Rice stated. “It’s my aesthetic anyway, but it turned out that I was selecting matters that in good shape.”
He opted not to make any massive architectural modifications, but the household desired in depth repairs and upgrades, from replacing rotten cedar boards outside to including warmth tape around pipes that would or else freeze in the winter.
“Being on Fire Island, involving the ocean and the bay, is actually difficult on the homes,” he claimed. “All the salt, the continual dampness, et cetera. So every year I do a huge venture. I did the electrical technique and the plumbing process. This slide, it’s going to be the substitution of all the doors and windows.”
In all, Mr. Rice estimated that he has put in about $400,000 restoring and keeping the dwelling.
He has also flipped the script on proudly owning a summer season property, spending the vast majority of the yr on Fire Island and periodically returning to his apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he is not living in the pyramid, he rents it out on Airbnb and Vrbo, where by it can fetch a lot more than $3,000 a night in the summertime. “It is my key home,” he claimed, “but I do lease the dwelling out in the significant season to enable defray all of the ongoing expenses.”
And if he misses a few incredibly hot, sunny days in July and August, that’s Okay. “Looking as a result of that window,” he said, “no make any difference what the weather is — a storm, a snowstorm, a sunny working day or clouds heading by — is just great.”
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