Open House

Architect Charles Renfro bought the simple, first house Horace Gifford designed on Fire Island and only added outdoor rooms.

- WENDY GOODMAN

CHARLES RENFRO had been renting a Cape Cod-style bungalow with friends in Cherry Grove on Fire Island for a few years when he decided to look at buying a place in the Pines, the town next door, which is "decidedly more design-y, and more sexy, and more intimidating," he says. "Part of why it was intimidating is because of the houses, many of which are modern and open and put life on display like a stage.

"The master of that was Horace Gifford," Renfro adds, the handsome Louis Kahn acolyte who, from 1961 until his death in 1992, built more than 60 houses on the island. Gifford's houses started out simple and sustainable, although no one was calling them that back then, and respected the scrubby landscape. In the summer of 2013, this "postage stamp of a house" by Gifford came on the market. "The owner had died.