Norman Jaffe’s 1977 House for Sportscaster Jack Whitaker

An inscription photo shows the non -chic exterior of a Norman Jaffe house from 1977. A shingle wall (right) hides a bamboo garden and an expert patio that it almost goes with the facade.
Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty

When Norman Jaffe set up his practice in Bridgehampton, he built unconventional houses for unconventional New Yorkers. Jack Whitaker, one of these customers, was a sporting accord known to An elegant and scholarly style. (His golf comment could include a mention of the “Henry V camp at the Battle of Agincourt”, and he opened the blanket of a marathon with the line, “follow these butchers, bakers and teachers, because they cross this rescue and he did a little beach, which was a little time for having done the beach, which did not want to do the beach Not, so he did a few for moments. Build coarse and geometric shapes who came from its potato fields and dunes.

Like other Jaffe houses, the house designed for Whitaker is built around a large high ceiling room, but it does not seem cavernous and cold, thanks to a wood exposed hot with honey and a human feeling in the way the rooms take place, without long corridors or closed cages. (Jaffe’s houses looked like shelters, giving customers “warmth and intimacy, not a complete exhibition and the life of a laboratory style of modernism on hard edges”, ” wrote The critic Alastair Gordon.) A bard wall of the aisle melts outside in a shingle, hiding a bamboo garden and sliding glass doors that lead inside. A soft slope roof heads a large room lit by a ribbon of light wells and more sliding doors on the rear deck. One side is a den that leads to another bridge, and on the other side of the house is the kitchen with a work fireplace. Whitaker nicknamed The Place Sparrow Hall, a reference to a medieval saint proverb About a sparrow which flies over a royal banquet, feeling only a brief moment of heat. “It’s the story of life”, Whitaker said to Southampton Press. This may also be the story of the house-a comfortable respite from the stress weekend of a Manhattan editorial room.

A photo of an open staircase shows Jaffe’s ability to cut interior spaces without counting on dark corridors. The rooms seem to take place naturally – with a kitchen and rooms on the left in this image, and a den and a large room on the right.
Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty

The house was finished in 1977, just as Jaffe won a new level of renown which would prove to be a curse. An AIA price and a Architectural file book Presenting a series of his vacation escapes brought rich customers more likely to push Jaffe than to trust his vision. The houses have changed – becoming “larger, splashing and in a number of almost explosive and not a little vulgar cases”, according to the critical Paul Goldberger. Jaffe accepted, calling the “pig-out” manors, like his son Miles Jaffe later said journalists. Jaffe died in 1993 at 61, after having been swimming in the morning and was never seen again. Police called for accidental drowning, but his son called that suicide. He was buried outside the Jewish synagogue he designed in 1988.

While McMans took root in the potato fields, some Jaffe houses were demolished. But the Whitaker house is mainly intact. The sports launcher and his wife, the tennis champion Nancy Chaffee, added a Green before they sold in 2002 to Mark and Wendy Biderman, who had come to the Hamptons for decades. Bidermans loved Jaffe’s work, said their broker, and did not want to live anywhere “typical” or “cookie”, like Mark said Newspaper In 2021. And they certainly didn’t want something to make. “Wood and colors made a house look like a centerpiece,” said Mark.

A photo of the list of an airy living space shows the warmth of Jaffe’s creations – modern but never cold.
Photo: Richard Taverna

However, if someone was looking for a centerpiece of Jaffe, he could have bought this house. He has the same DNA as The 1977 house which won Jaffe a major prize And stands out his long sloping roof which almost seems to hit the ground, creating a pyramidal silhouette. When the Bidermans bought it, they planned a small addition – a fourth room above a new garage. Their broker, Beate V. Moore, sold two other Jaffe houses and spent enough time in the catalog to find out where Jaffe is out of step with the buyer today: smaller and darker rooms. Moore says that it is the opposite to 95 Jobs Lane, where one of the largest places is the main continuation – which is at the top of the house, under the high ceilings of its soothed roof, and has a terrace which extends over the length with a view of the backyard and the swimming pool.

A list of a sunny living room shows sliding doors that open onto a mahogany bridge.
Photo: Richard Taverna

Mark Biderman said Newspaper That the family bought the retired house to enjoy with their children and grandchildren, but they ended up living there full time during the pandemic. It gave them a chance to see how the region had changed because Wendy Biderman wrote In 27 East. But “as the things around us have changed, we tried not to do it.” The work on the house was mainly to prevent the weather. Moore, their broker, has listed all their fixes, including a new roof and new shingles. “They kept it well,” he said.

An inscription photo shows what the large rear bridge looks like a pool and a green pool. A side terrace (on the left) includes a roof strip that facilitates the movement of a dining table in or out of the sun.
Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty

A list of a living room shows vaulted ceilings and light wells that fill the natural light space.
Photo: Richard Taverna