In 1965, working on a $35,000 budget and without an architecture license, Charles Gwathmey designed the groundbreaking “Gwathmey Residence” in Amagansett for his parents. Three years later, after being celebrated for its nontraditional, geometric construction, Gwathmey began his third project, at 19 Northwest Landing Road in East Hampton, for graphic designer Joe Sedacca. “I told Charles all I wanted were 2 bedrooms and a wonderful kitchen,” Sedacca told The New York Times in 1992. Until its recent listing for $2.5 million, the home had only been on the market twice: Once in 1992, when Sedacca sold it for less than the $399,000 asking price, and again in 2016, when it sold for $1,995,000.
Constructed in a similar style to Gwathmey’s earlier homes, the cedar plank house has an expansive and dramatic glass-walled living room, oversize stucco chimney, and a heated swimming pool, in addition to its rounded, light-filled kitchen. Since the home was created to Sedacca’s original specifications, and only included 2 bedrooms in its 1,100-square-foot floorplan, Gwathmey included a storage building on the property. A later owner installed an Airstream trailer to add a third bedroom without altering the original design.
Later projects by Gwathmey, who died in 2009, included Hamptons homes for Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, Jerry Seinfeld and David Katzenberg; a Central Park West apartment for Faye Dunaway; and renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 1992. But he may still be best known for his early work out east. “I think those houses revitalized or changed the concept of building in the Hamptons,” Gwathmey told The New York Times, “Those houses broke the mold of the vernacular, shingle-style house and showed for the first time a modern house that was not imitative or historicist.”
See the listing: 19 Northwest Landing Road in East Hampton, listed by Michael Schultz of the Corcoran Group.
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