Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons [Hardcover]

Alastair Gordon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

The Hamptons, New York's fashionable summer beach resorts, are well known as weekend havens for city-dwellers who relish their idyllic setting on the Atlantic shore. Once quiet agricultural land, Eastern Long Island first became popular among artists, architects, writers, and society patrons in the 1920s, when it served as a breeding ground for modernism. From the avant-garde influence of luminaries like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Kooning, to the high modernism of Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, and Richard Meier, new ideas about art, architecture, and modern living transformed the Hamptons and ultimately made it the destination of choice for those seeking respite from the battles of Wall Street and Madison Avenue. In Weekend Utopia Alastair Gordon traces this fascinating and complicated trajectory, both in architectural terms-looking at modest beach houses and modern mansions alike-and in the life stories of the world-famous artists and designers, whose influence is felt on "The Island" even today. Over 175 photographs and illustrations detail the architecture, interiors, and nuances of these beautiful weekend homes, and provide an intimate portrait of the people who inhabit them. This engrossing book combines architectural history with a broad social perspective and paints a comprehensive picture of an area that in many ways shaped modern American culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The beach house was "the sonnet form of American architecture," writes Alastair Gordon. "This was where the revolution began." In his gracefully written, stunningly illustrated book, he shows how the evolution of summer housing on the once-rural eastern end of Long Island, New York, heralded key developments in architecture.

By the late 1920s, the sprawling Southampton mansions of Stanford White and others were passé. The new style was a modernist box, raised up on supporting columns for protection and a better view, with a sun deck and floor-to-ceiling windows. (See Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Midcentury Oasis or Palm Springs Modern: Houses in the California Desert for a West Coast version of modernist vacation home design.)

After World War II, the Hamptons became a favorite destination of New York artists, architects, and writers, who ushered in a period of fanciful experimentation. Then came the deluge. Gordon's own family, who bought their prefab beach home in the '50s, was part of a trend celebrated by Life magazine in 1959, the year Nixon and Khrushchev held their Kitchen Debate at a Leisurama house.

Gordon vividly describes the innovations of the '50s and '60s, from the stunningly pure Blake House (two square, ground-hugging sections with a central breezeway framing the ocean view) to the proud verticals of the Gwathmey House, clad in vertical cedar siding approximating the look of carved concrete. In the '70s, as ocean-view lots became scarce, some architects ignored the natural setting, creating imposing sculptural statements craning to isolate an elusive view. Others, including Robert Venturi and Jack Lenore Larsen, gave vernacular styles a postmodern twist.

Rightly decrying the neotraditional behemoths built in the '80s to satisfy the insecurities of the megarich, Gordon takes the long view. Each wave of newcomers remade this flat land in their own image, yet "something about it resists change." --Cathy Curtis

From Publishers Weekly

For a good beach read (or a distraction from traffic on the Long Island Expressway) the coffee table-sized Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons chronicles successive waves of refuge seekers and the architectural innovations they spurred on, culminating in New York's beachfront babylon. After a decade as an East Hampton Star columnist and with his current gig as a House & Garden contributing editor, Alistair Gordon has an insider's knowledge of the area, which he supplements with 75 color and 100 b&w illustrations and photos. From the late-19th-century "Tile Club" to Pollock, De Kooning & Co. to today's moguls, Gordon's eye for the convergence of arts, architecture and commerce is unerring.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 172 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568982720
• ISBN-13: 978-1568982724
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 10 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alastair Gordin is an author who likes to explore urban and ex-urban spaces,
especially marginal places like airports, beach houses, hippie houses, and isolation chambers.
I was born in Scotland but have lived most of my life in or near new York City.
I have published several books including Weekend Utopia, Spaced Out, Naked Airport, Beach Houses, Romantic Modernist, Long Island Modern, The Hamptons After Pollock, American Dream, Beaux Arch, Miami:Blueprint of Eden,
I travel extensively and write for different publications including WSJ., the Wall Street Journal Magazine.
My family and I have moved to Miami for the year and we like it here beside the manatees and the iguanas.
I am finishing a book about my father and war and memory--not really about architecture at all -- but many of the same themes run throughout--and the vigelence of viewing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't shoot the messenger, July 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons (Hardcover)

I'm a bit mystified by the comments below that seem to implicate this book and its author in what the Hamptons have become. To the contrary, Weekend Utopia celebrates happier days pre-mega mansions: when culture and architecture and some fascinating characters created some truly exceptional houses, most of them modest in scale. In fact, today's Hamptons home-builders could learn a lesson or two from this book (like small can be very beautiful), and stop the further despoilment of what the Hamptons used to be: something Weekend Utopia shows with great clarity and style. This wonderful book is certainly no apologia for the mess that awaits you at the end of I-495...

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inside Utopia, June 4, 2001

By 

Roland Legiardi-laura (New York City, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons (Hardcover)

Without a doubt the best book on the Hamptons! A must for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of exclusive communities in the US. Cleverly disguised as a coffee table book, it is filled with extraordinary and beautiful photographs, sketches and architectural drawings. Gordon, in his long essay, lays out the history of the place with insight, humor and fascinating detail. The scope is vast and should rivet your attention whether or not you find the Hamptons themselves worth thinking about. Anyone who wants to better understand understand one of the fundamental motivations of American culture and society should sit down with 'Weekend Utopia', preferably on the beach on a warm Sunday.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warmed Me Up on Winter Weekend, February 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons (Hardcover)

Finally got the chance to sit and read Gordon's excellent text in Weekend Utopia. The book goes way beyond an illustrated coffee book. Gordon manages to weave together stories about the characters who shaped the place (like developer Carl Fisher who created Montauk to be the "Miami Beach of the North")with stories about the flamboyant architecture, post-war artists like Pollock and Motherwell and his own personal memories as a boy spending summers there. While the book has a large format with hundreds of illustrations it is most readable and explains so much about how a rural American landscape was transformed into a resort for show-offs. I loved it and can't comprehend what reviewers from Hong Kong and the Netherlands were talking about. It is neither trying to be a professional book on architecture nor a cheap gossip book about pseudo-celebrities. It is an intelligent cultural history that also happens to be well designed and illustrated. It warmed my soul on a chilly winter weekend and made me want to go to the beach as soon as possible.