Click on image to view full PDF
Reed and Delphine Krakoff understand style. He is the president and creative director of Coach and she’s an interior designer. Their tastes in real estate are urbane and sophisticated—and not the least bit predictable. Their last house, now sold, is a small, clean-lined cubist composition, spare and quadratic, in a blue chip Southampton estate area location. The property they’ve recently bought is a large, classic East Hampton estate with an illustrious history.
The property is Lasata, and for a few brief, shining years in the early and mid 1930s, the Bouvier family had their own Camelot on this great Further Lane estate. Built in 1917, a glorious age for the design and construction of major American houses, Lasata was acquired by Maude Sergeant Bouvier in 1925 with her own family money; her husband later bought it from her when he could afford it. It became the center of their family life. Grandchildren Jackie, Lee and Little Edie, who all lived nearby, spent summers in their early youth there—acknowledged by all them as some of the happiest times in their lives.
The golden years did not continue for long, however, as the family fortune and then in the late 1930s, the family itself, disintegrated. In recent decades the house was owned by Miriam Fitzsimmons Meehan, who died in 2005 at age 93. Her heirs have now sold the property to the Krakoffs.
The grey stucco house is large and expansive but still graceful and understated, with elegant, unerringly controlled detailing. It’s a pitch-perfect synthesis of elements, conservative in comparison to more assertive styles we see now. The 11 acre property, with its vast lawn, runs from Further Lane to Middle Lane, in the heart of the East Hampton estate area.
We were curious as to how the Krakoffs will handle this important estate. They set an unconventional precedent when they bought their house in Southampton in 2003. It seemed highly likely that the small gem of a house set on 3.3 beautifully landscaped acres would be replaced by something very grand and trendy. But to the surprise of a lot of us, they kept it and restored it.
I caught up with Krakoff recently and asked about his plans. “We love the spirit of the place,” he told me, “and want to keep the same house. We’ll keep the original paneling and the flooring, the original windows and doors. We want the edge, the imperfections, the things we fell in love with. The exterior will have the same look and color. The house will seem very much as it does now.”
Does this mean they’ll pack their summer clothes and move right in? Not exactly. “We are doing a restoration, as opposed to a renovation. We are not adding to or really changing the house. We want to keep the integrity and flavor of the house untouched. The kitchen and baths [which are not the original ones in any case]—those will be updated, but most of what we do, like the mechanical systems, will be undetectable.” They hope to be in for the summer of 2008, and have rented a shingle house, also with some history attached, near the Amagansett end of Further Lane until then.
And what about the change in lifestyle? “We had a modernist house in Southampton, and we feel very lucky to have the opportunity to now live in an older house, a relaxed family kind of place.”
Lasata is a Native American dialect word that translates as “place of peace.” In its long history, it has not always been relaxed and peaceful. But Reed and Delphine Krakoff and their four children now have the opportunity to put the meaning of the word into their lives at Lasata.