Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction - by Christopher Rawlins (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Featuring new houses, many additional photographs and a new afterword, Fire Island Modernist offers a fascinating look at the history and culture of this "gay paradise" through the life and work of Horace Gifford

Published with Gordon De Vries Studio.

As the 1960s became the "Sixties," architect Horace Gifford executed a remarkable series of beach houses that transformed the terrain and culture of New York's Fire Island. Growing up on the beaches of Florida, Gifford forged a deep connection with coastal landscapes. Pairing this sensitivity with jazzy improvisations on modernist themes, he perfected a sustainable modernism in cedar and glass that was as attuned to natural landscapes as to our animal natures. Gifford's serene 1960s pavilions provided refuge from a hostile world, while his exuberant post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS masterpieces orchestrated bacchanals of liberation. Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift once spurned Hollywood limos for the rustic charm of Fire Island's boardwalks. Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's here. Diane von Fürstenberg showed off her latest wrap dresses to an audience that included Halston, Giorgio Sant' Angelo, Calvin Klein and Geoffrey Beene. Today, such a roster evokes the aloof, gated compounds of the Hamptons or Malibu. But these celebrities lived in modestly scaled homes alongside middle-class vacationers, all with equal access to Fire Island's natural beauty.
Blending cultural and architectural history, Fire Island Modernist ponders a fascinating era through an overlooked architect whose life, work and colorful milieu trace the operatic arc of a lost generation, and still resonate with artistic and historical import. First published in 2013 and long out of print, this iconic book returns in an expanded edition, including five new featured houses, drawings of previously unseen homes, new photography, updated scholarship and a new afterword by Charles Renfro.

Review Quotes

Nearly seven decades later, Gifford's work endures as one of the clearest architectural arguments that gay lives--and gay homes--need not follow heterosexual norms.--Michael Bullock "Pines Party Community Journal"

Originally published in 2013 and out of print, this new edition reintroduces that legacy to a new audience with expanded insight. Now the primary steward of a fragile history, Rawlins revisits a pivotal era and the unsung architect whose work reflected - and helped shape - a generation's ideals, pleasures, and eventual losses.--Joseph Sgambati III "Design Milk"

Rawlins's treatment exudes scholarly rigor and site sensitivity....--Eric Schwartau "The New York Review of Architecture"

[Horace Gifford's] homes felt at one with the island -- and celebrated its sexually liberated way of life with voyeuristic relish.--Oliver Wainright "The Guardian"

[An] essential overview of one of modernism's most intriguing microcosms.--Jonathan Bell "Wallpaper*"

The infamous queer enclave hidden on a barrier island is home to some of the most impressive modernist architecture on the East Coast. [...] This book, by Pines historian Christopher Rawlins, documents many of Gifford's most celebrated works in Fire Island Pines....--Colin King "Cultured"