Designer revisits Leisurama in new book

Paul Sahre is a graphic designer by trade, but one of his recent passions has been researching and documenting the Leisurama houses in Montauk.

Little known outside the East End, the 250 or so Leisurama houses in Culloden Shores, built and sold by All-State Properties in the mid 1960s for between $13,000 and $20,000 each, have become an obsession of sorts for Mr. Sahre. His interest was first piqued in February 2001 when he came out to Montauk from Brooklyn with his friend and fellow graphic designer Nicholas Blechman in search of an affordable summer rental.

As Mr. Sahre tells it, after viewing far too many Montauk houses that were out of reach for their budget, the two friends were finally sold on a Leisurama rental on Cranberry Street in Culloden Shores. Though they weren’t particularly impressed with the exterior of the small ranch house, the men quickly realized that the modest home would probably fit the bill in terms of finances.

The potential renters were happily surprised by the well-designed roomy interior of the house, but the rental deal was sealed the moment they found out that the house came with a branded logo.

“Every graphic designer should have a beach house with a logo,” Mr. Sahre last Wednesday night during a reading of his book, “Leisurama Now: The Beach House for Everyone,” at the Montauk Library.

Mr. Sahre told the crowd of approximately 60 people who had gathered for the presentation and book signing—15 of whom were Leisurama owners—that he became intrigued to learn more about the simply, but cleverly built small homes once he began spending time in his Montauk rental. He said he became particularly enthralled, and developed a love/hate relationship with how the originally identically-built houses had morphed into their current architecture, which in many cases is radically different from the original structures.

Tracking the evolution of the homes that were once billed as the ultimate “American Dream” in terms of convenience, Mr. Sahre said he hoped to capture a diminishing and mostly undocumented phenomena.

“No one outside of Montauk seemed to know what this thing was,” he said. “Outside of the owners and the houses themselves, these [homes] seem to have been covered by the sands of time.”

In the preface of his book, Mr. Sahre wrote, “One of my favorite things to do that summer was to just walk around the neighborhood. The experience was not unlike watching a scene in Godfrey Reggio’s film ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (only without the soundtrack); one could almost see the neighborhood morphing into something else in fast forward. Since the buildings were originally identical, each alteration made over time (and sadly, each Leisurama torn down), is made visible, even if the motivation behind the change is not.”

It took just under five years for Mr. Sahre and his collaborators, including friend and fellow graphic designer Peter Ahlberg who made the trek to Montauk from Manhattan many times with the author, to amass enough history and inventory the remaining 167 intact Leisurama houses to write a book about them. Mr. Ahlberg said that he and Mr. Sahre literally went from house to house and spoke with individual owners to learn about the houses.

Mr. Ahlberg said that he came to love his involvement with the project, which spanned about three years of actively gathering and archiving information and photos and interviewing homeowners and historians.

“I came at this completely blind but I really got excited about these quirky little ranch houses,” he said on Wednesday night. “They’ve got such personality.”

All told, Mr. Sahre and his collaborators found “95 to 96 percent” of the items that came with the original Leisurama homes, which were sold fully furnished and even included items such as a 45-piece Melmac dinner service and plastic glasses, flatware, linens and towels, bath mats and even toothbrushes.

“It really did come down to going door-to-door for us to gather this information,” Mr. Sahre said on Wednesday night, adding that the use of tact was a necessity in approaching some of his neighbors. “You don’t walk up to some stranger’s door and ask them if they have a 40-year-old toothbrush,” he laughed.

In discussing his process for putting together his book, Mr. Sahre said that he was inspired by a book his uncle had given him years ago titled “Gettysburg: A Journey in Time” by William Frassanito. That book presented a photographic journey of the history of the Gettysburg battles through a series of “then and now shots,” Mr. Sahre said, adding that the idea of comparative analysis was also important to him in documenting Leisurama houses.

The journey was informative and a little sad for the author who said he was heartbroken to walk by a Dumpster “crammed full of original looking mattresses and furniture” outside a neighbor’s Leisurama house. “But, there’s no stopping progress,” he said.

Citing how many of the 40-year-old homes have changed radically from their original plans and furnishings, Mr. Sahre encouraged the audience to support a Leisurama museum in Montauk. Though he returns to his Cranberry Street rental each summer, Mr. Sahre said that he hopes to someday own one of the Leisurama homes, which he said he would restore to its original splendor.

“This is an interesting, weird, quirky part of American history and culture,” Mr. Sahre said. “I don’t know what the future holds but I hope that more people will feel the individual responsibility to maintain the neighborhood.”