LongHouse Panel Examines Work of Modernist Norman Jaffe

An exploration of the extraordinary career and life of Norman Jaffe (1932-1993) took place on the Sunday before last at LongHouse in East Hampton. This program, part of a series of talks on Long Island Modern, was billed as “The Vanishing: 1993, A deep dive into the work and mysterious disappearance of Norman Jaffe, architect.”

Architect Lee Skolnick introduced the program with an overview of modernism and discussed how the movement evolved on Long Island over decades. Modernism originated in Europe with the work of architects Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. It embodied a political and social movement dedicated to creating a better society. Early modernism came to Long Island in the 1940s-1950s. In the 1960s it developed into a recognizable style. Postmodernism took over in the 1970s, and Skolnick called it a “misinterpretation of history” replete with a combination of “neo-shingle and neo-Victorian style” houses. The third wave of modernism in recent years has harkened back to the original beach houses — except for the fact that they’re “on steroids.” He noted that we are currently looking again at smaller houses, but when the modern houses become really big, they simply look institutional.

Journalist and author Alastair Gordon, in discussing the evolution of Jaffe’s career, described his beginnings in Chicago. He came from a poor Jewish family from Poland and Latvia and was sent to the Pacific Northwest to stay with relatives in Seattle during the Depression. After high school he enlisted in the military in 1954 and served in the Army Corp of Engineers. He was stationed in Japan where he drew up military installations. In 1956 he matriculated at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champlain and later transferred to U.C. Berkeley. There he studied under esteemed residential architects William Worster and Joseph Esherick, the founder of the College of Environmental Design. After receiving his degree in 1961 he worked for Esherick on the Sea Ranch houses until moving to New York to work for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill followed by a stint in the office of Philip Johnson where he worked on the State Pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair. During the 1960s Jaffe started coming out to visit the Hamptons and in 1973 opened his architectural firm in Bridgehampton. His practice took off, and he designed over 50 houses in a short period of time, ranging from small homes to estate houses.

Influenced by the first wave of modernism in this country, his love of wood from his years in the Pacific Northwest, the natural landscape of the East End, the age-old vernacular materials that define its identity and beauty, and by its remarkable light, Jaffe’s architecture was self-referential in its borrowings from these elements of both past and present.

Jaffe gained fame after being featured in Men’s Bazaar in 1967. He designed a house for Sasha Berland in East Hampton recalling barn-shaped buildings. In 1970 he designed the Perlbinder house in Sagaponack on the oceanfront. Jaffe said the Perlbinders wanted to hump the back of the dune. In 1998 the house was moved 400 feet back from the dune due to the encroaching erosion of the beachfront. He also designed the now defunct Laundry restaurant in East Hampton, which was a hot spot in the 1980s and 1990s known for its bar and gather-round, sunken fireplace.

In 1969, after visiting Ireland, he designed a house for Harold Becker in Sagaponack. Jaffe created an inspired design for this two-story house with a one-story wall in a field extending linearly off the side wall and closing off its exposure to the road. The landscaping and siting afforded privacy and a magnificent view of the ocean for the owners.

In 1973, for his friend, the drummer, Chico Hamilton, Jaffe delivered a creekfront house in East Hampton where one entered the building from a bridge to the streetside. The small home, elevated above the creek, was open on the interior up to the roof and provided celestial light which infused the space. His use of skylights for this purpose was one of many themes found in his houses. The Hamilton house on Waterhole Road was bought for $900,000 in 2017 by East Hampton Town with Community Preservation Fund monies. It was demolished to prevent the septic system from leaching into the adjacent creek. No thought was given to the significance of this home. Why the town spent money to do this when an I/A wastewater system could have been installed is beyond all credulity. The lot is now a park.

Jaffe’s own house was an exercise in light and air, both of which were brought into the house in a way that illuminated it from within. Again, the engagement of light from above is a design feature, something that permeated almost all his houses. Alastair Gordon drew a comparison between Jaffe’s house and Alvar Alto’s 1951 home. Both architects had a unique sensibility about form making, spatial relationships, materials and orientation in the landscape.

Jaffe, as both land planner and developer, also worked on a subdivision for six houses on lots he bought along Sam’s Creek in Bridgehampton. The site, according to Alistair Gordon, is at once the base, the foreground and the background for the subdivision. Rather, each property rolls seamlessly onto the next. Sam’s Creek is not your standard, cookie cutter cul-de-sac subdivision. Here Jaffe established a rolling lawn fitted snugly into the landscape where linear, flat-roofed homes rest in gentle berms of lawn. There are no fences or privet hedges separating the properties, and homeowners can walk the entire length of the creekfront as if they owned an expansive piece of property with excellent water views. The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie houses is keenly felt with these homes.

In recent years quite a few Jaffe houses have been demolished, and none of them had any kind of landmarks protection even though many of them built before 1974 would be eligible. The Raynes house on the oceanfront in Southampton has been demolished, and the Bliss house is also under threat. Within the community there has been an outpouring of support to save this house from the wrecking ball.

Jaffe was an architect of the design/build variety. This meant that he would often edit his designs while they were in construction, something that is basically unheard of today. If he came to a job site and the placement of a wall didn’t look right, he would order it to be moved, no matter the cost. And, his clients were hard pressed not to like his designs.

Jaffe’s office was relatively small. There were usually three or four people in the office and never more than seven or eight even in the busiest of times. Three of his former employees provided insight into the way Jaffe worked. Keith Boyce, who worked Jaffe for many years, described how Jaffe would do a wonderful rendering showing a house as it should be seen in the landscape. These drawings were also reminiscent of the renderings produced by Frank Lloyd Wright. He once told me that you must give the client one great façade.

Chris LaGuardia, a landscape architect, who worked for Jaffe on the landscape design for his projects, also described the work they did together. The landscape was used as a design feature that served the architecture.

Randy Rosenthal, is an artist who worked for Jaffe. He did the carvings on the walls of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton. Iconographic symbols of Judaism are embedded on the walls of the sanctuary. The sefirot motif, a tree-life form prevalent in Hebraic iconography, is carved into the walls at 10 locations. There is also a Star of David incised on the wall over the bema table. Jaffee loved Rosenthal’s idea to cut Stars of David into a decorative banding of shingles on the exterior of the building. Listening to his former staff members talk about the work done in the Jaffe office it became clear that the process of putting the design together was a collaborative effort on the part of all involved.

With the Jewish Center of the Hamptons Jaffe received national and international acclaim for his design. In the “Gates of the Grove” the regional vernacular of shingled facades is on full display as is the all wood interior as well. He often called himself a wood architect, but he also employed a palette of other natural materials in his work such as stone flooring with limestone or Crab Orchard. Fireplaces were faced with stone both inside and out as were retaining walls. Jaffe designed the Jewish Center pro bono, and it was a highly personal examination of the synthesis of built form with cultural heritage. It is, without a doubt, the most significant work of architecture built on the East End in the last 50 years.

After the Jewish Center Jaffe went on to design the lobby of 565 Fifth Avenue in New York in collaboration with the Emory Roth architecture firm. For this project he had a full-scale mockup of the lobby made. He had turned a corner in his career with this commission as he looked to do larger projects.

On August 19, 1993, Jaffe went for his usual swim in the ocean and disappeared. Family and colleagues assumed he had drowned. Keith Boyce walked the beach with the thought that Jaffe may have gone to visit one of the houses he had designed. A month later a bone, found on the beach, was identified by the Suffolk County medical examiner and his death was confirmed through medical records. He was 61 years old.

Anne Surchin is an East End architect and writer.