He Didn’t Plan to Purchase a Place on Hearth Island. However This Was No Strange House.

Glenn Rice’s journey to proudly owning a home on Hearth Island, N.Y., started unexpectedly in Boston and was propelled, surprisingly, by his love of theater.

In September 2017, Mr. Rice, an actual property agent, visited Boston to see a pal carry out within the opening night time of the play “WARHOLCAPOTE.” At a dinner afterward, he befriended Rob Roth, the playwright who wrote the present.

“We simply began speaking and obtained alongside like gangbusters,” stated Mr. Rice, 49. “So on the finish of the night, he stated, ‘You need to come out and stick with me in Hearth Island. I feel you’ll prefer it.’”

The following summer time, Mr. Rice took Mr. Roth up on the supply and located that he appreciated Mr. Roth’s getaway within the Pines very a lot certainly. However as he strolled alongside the boardwalk, it was one other home that commanded his consideration: a big, pyramid-shaped constructing with cedar shingles on three sides and a hovering triangular wall of metal and glass on the fourth.

It was virtually as if a big mock-up of I.M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramid had washed up on the seaside.

Intrigued, Mr. Rice started asking round and realized that the home was owned by Jeff Mahshie, a trend and costume designer. So when Mr. Rice’s buddies inspired him to ask for a tour, he barely hesitated earlier than strolling over.

Mr. Mahshie answered and welcomed him inside — and Mr. Rice couldn’t imagine his eyes as he took within the sweeping view over sand dunes to the ocean and the bay.

“We stroll in, and it’s simply unimaginable,” Mr. Rice stated.

The home was designed by Julio Kaufman, an Argentine architect, within the early Nineteen Sixties. Then in 2001, the author Paul Rudnick purchased it and employed one other architect, Hal Hayes, to replace and broaden it. It was Mr. Hayes who added the steel-and-glass wall, and who reconfigured the inside to make the highest degree an open living-and-dining space with a kitchen and the decrease degree an expansive main suite. Outdoors, Mr. Hayes added a poolside guesthouse comprising three related bins with pyramidal roofs.

Mr. Rice marveled on the compound, engaged Mr. Mahshie in dialog about scripts he spied on tables and eventually advised him that he was fortunate to reside in such a panoramic residence.

“And he stated, ‘Truly, I’m pondering of promoting,’” Mr. Rice recalled.

Mr. Rice occurred to be within the means of promoting his Harlem brownstone, which would supply him with the funds to purchase the home. Again in Manhattan, a number of days later, “we met for lunch in TriBeCa and did a handshake deal,” Mr. Rice stated, after agreeing to a value of $1.32 million.

“I simply fell in love with the home and thought every part about it — together with the method by which I used to be getting it — was superb,” he stated.

After closing in December 2018, he wanted to furnish the house, however he was ready for that, too: An aficionado of design, Mr. Rice runs a facet enterprise referred to as Supervision, shopping for and promoting classic midcentury-modern furnishings and equipment. For the lounge, he introduced in a pair of teak-and-cane sofas designed by Peter Hvidt and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen within the late Nineteen Fifties, plus a pair of slouchy armchairs with lacquered wooden frames and blue suede upholstery from the Seventies. For the first suite, he put in a Norwegian Westnofa rosewood bed room set from the Nineteen Sixties and classic French resin benches with multicolored geometric bases.

“Just about every part is from across the similar time interval as the home,” Mr. Rice stated. “It’s my aesthetic anyway, however it turned out that I used to be selecting issues that match.”

He opted to not make any large architectural modifications, however the home wanted intensive repairs and upgrades, from changing rotten cedar boards exterior to including warmth tape round pipes that may in any other case freeze within the winter.

“Being on Hearth Island, between the ocean and the bay, is absolutely arduous on the homes,” he stated. “All of the salt, the fixed moisture, et cetera. So yearly I do an enormous undertaking. I did {the electrical} system and the plumbing system. This fall, it’s going to be the alternative of all of the doorways and home windows.”

In all, Mr. Rice estimated that he has spent about $400,000 restoring and sustaining the home.

He has additionally flipped the script on proudly owning a summer time residence, spending nearly all of the yr on Hearth Island and periodically returning to his house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he isn’t dwelling within the pyramid, he rents it out on Airbnb and Vrbo, the place it could fetch greater than $3,000 an evening in the summertime. “It’s my main residence,” he stated, “however I do hire the home out within the excessive season to assist defray all the ongoing prices.”

And if he misses a number of sizzling, sunny days in July and August, that’s OK. “Wanting by way of that window,” he stated, “it doesn’t matter what the climate is — a storm, a snowstorm, a sunny day or clouds going by — is simply improbable.”

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