Amagansett Legacy

By Lauren Aitken

In 1979 Michelle Murphy and Robert Strada, a young couple who’d known each other only eight months, began to look for their perfect Hamptons house. Real estate agent Ceil Ackley took them to a shingle-style Amagansett house built in 1894 to give them an idea of the sort of old-world house they sought. Alas, it wasn’t for sale. Yet the pair fell so in love with the authentic relic of times past that a deal was soon struck. Now, counting 36 years of marriage behind them, husband and wife still reside in the house. They are only the third owners.

Originally built on Atlantic Avenue as a dwelling for Capt. Sam Loper, who ran the Amagansett Life-Saving Station, it was moved to its present location on Fresh Pond Road in 1903 upon Loper’s retirement. He owned the house, but not the land so it made the several-mile trip to his father’s parcel. The Stradas were struck not only with the house, but also with its connection to the area’s past. “We both fell in love with the roots of the house,” says Robert, a designer and historic preservationist. They were seduced by the home’s history as well as the Lopers, “a famous old family,” according to Michelle. Fast forward to the present time. Robert is a board member of the lifesaving station where pictures of Capt. Loper adorn the walls. To bring things full circle, builder Ben Krupinksi helped restore the station. Ben’s mother is Ms. Ackley.

But the couple also fell in love with the structure’s bones and the fact that it was “very well made.” When they moved in, on weekends for 22 years till they moved in permanently in 2001, only one upstairs room was heated and a motorcycle was parked in the entry hall. “I would take the train out from the city on Friday mornings and spend the day cleaning with a bandana on my head, listening to poetry on tape,” says Michelle, an artist, poet and playwright, who is writing a memoir about her showbiz family. One such Friday she came upon a snake twined around the upstairs bannister and chased it with a broom downstairs and out the door. There were even bats.
But nothing dissuaded them from the painstaking process of updating, renovating and expanding the edifice. Originally a farmhouse, the footprint has remained intact while the house was raised to accommodate a basement (replete with media room), wings were added and a switch made from shingle to clapboard on the exterior to give it a Greek Revival feel. Their first move was to put a woodstove in one of the five “rabbit’s warren” upstairs bedrooms, where they camped out, “teeth chattering,” while they worked on the rest of the house. It was romantic, recalls Michelle. The entire downstairs of the farmhouse is now the kitchen/dining room from which the steep and narrow original staircase (now the back stairs) still rises to second floor.

The second owner put on a large addition sometime in the last century, but when the Stradas finally took on their major renovation in 2008 they expanded upon that. In order to widen the central hall into a grand entryway, Robert designed such architectural details as panelling and moldings, which were then handmade. To add space they forfeited footage in the living room, which they were able to reclaim by losing the porch, a move that still causes a sigh of some regret from Michelle, who enjoyed reading on a hammock as the sun set on the undulating terrain of the golf course across the street.

They reconfigured the upstairs to make comfortable bedrooms for their two daughters, Alex and Annie, and added three more fireplaces to the house for a total of four, which remind Michelle of the Garden City home in which she grew up, which boasted eight fireplaces, and also the Greenwich Village house the couple restored, which had nine. The Stradas are known for their winter holiday parties during which all fireplaces are ablaze.

They replaced floors using old-cut nails, “the way it would have been done,” says Robert, whose company, Strada Baxter Design/Build, restores historic homes. They also added a wing at the back where they put a library and an enclosed porch – to make up for the sacrificed front porch—which is surrounded on three sides by windows and overlooks the garden and pool. Above it is a deck off the master bedroom.

Another wing next to the living room was built to house Michelle’s painting studio. During the renovation, they moved into the atmospheric cottage on their property, which they bought from the widow of a Norwegian fisherman whose family had squeezed into the small space before the Stradas expanded it.

Though they say they plan to stay in the house “forever,” they have begun to rent it (and the cottage) during summer to those who want to borrow a piece of history. To make it more accommodating to today’s renters, they turned the library into a downstairs master suite. Meanwhile, the couple who recently founded Peconic Historic Preservation, a nonprofit that saves local structures facing the wrecking ball, enjoy balancing a fast-paced life (besides his business and her art, they both have shows on LTV) in a home built for a slower existence. On winter mornings MichelIe gets the studio fireplace roaring “to set the tone for an inspired day of painting and writing.” As evening approaches, the house is likely to fill with artists and friends for an impromptu dinner party by the dining room fireside, where their tradition is to “raise a toast to another day of creativity by the sea.”