LongHouse Celebrates 25 Years

LongHouse Reserve is a place for passion, a home for innovation, an environment for creativity, where art and nature live side by side in harmony.

Over the last 25 years, the East Hampton garden and outdoor art gallery has ebbed, flowed and evolved under the public's curious eye, despite the reserve’s original and, currently, simultaneous function as a private residence for founder Jack Lenor Larsen.

He doesn’t mind much. Once LongHouse opens its doors, season after season—this year, on April 30—the famous textile designer can be seen mingling at summer events, or motoring around the 16 acres of land in his golf cart, taking in the thousands of specimens he has nurtured there.

In honor of this landmark year, the reserve has a special season planned, according to executive director Matko Tomicic, which includes seven new sculptures, several additions to the garden and a full slate of programming.

“The wonderful thing about LongHouse is that you never know what to expect,” according to Dianne Benson, president of the reserve’s board of trustees. “But you do know that it will always be absolutely beautiful.”

While Mr. Larsen’s awards are many and his designs can be found in countless international museums, there has never been a time when he wasn’t seeking his identity through a sense of place.

The internationally recognized textile designer, author and collector stumbled across the Hamptons in the late 1950s as a summer getaway from Manhattan, and rented a chauffeur’s apartment on Lily Pond Lane. He toured East Hampton by bicycle, searching for the perfect place to build on the ocean.

Instead, he found 14 wooded, undeveloped and affordable acres on Hand’s Creek Road, and he fell in love with the possibilities. He purchased 10 of those acres, with the option to buy the other four.

In 1960, he found himself in West Africa—a lifelong goal fulfilled, as he’d wanted to visit since age 9, when he saw Princess Elizabeth touring the African colonies. He was inspired to finally build and design his first home on the East End, a place he called Round House. It was modeled after the dwellings he saw in Bantu villages.

For 25 happy years, Round House thrived, surrounded by an expansive garden. But in 1986, he would visit his “adopted big brother” Stanley Marcus, of the Neiman Marcus empire, at his sprawling Santa Fe home. There, he discovered the concept of “waste space,” or rooms that, essentially, existed for the sake of existing with little practical use.

And, with that, Mr. Larsen decided to sell Round House—not enough “waste space” for his liking—and build afresh next door on the 12 adjoining acres that he had luckily purchased as a buffer in 1975.

He immediately got to work with the help of architect Charles Forberg—their 30th collaboration together. Inspired by a sacred seventh-century Shinto shrine at Ise in Japan, which Mr. Larsen considers the most beautiful and tranquil structure in the world, the house was completed in five years.

Like the shrine at Ise, LongHouse was built in a large rectangular shape, based on stilts with a massive and steep overhanging gabled roof. But unlike Ise—which was not built with one screw or nail, only Japanese cedar—LongHouse was constructed of masonry, with a cost-effective and low-maintenance stucco façade, and glass and tile roof. A footbridge connects the second floor and all principal rooms to the gardens, and serves as a moon-gazing platform at night.

The formerly abandoned farmland overrun with white and red oaks, poison ivy, and wild grape and bittersweet vines was transformed. Mr. Larsen had cleared the trees and planted thousands of mail-ordered Canadian hemlocks along the old farming boundaries to naturally divide the grounds, reminiscent of the method used during the land’s former life.

He added hundreds of dogwoods, beeches and other varieties, and installed flower gardens and a large, south-facing lily and lotus pond. He enhanced the property with established lawns and ornamental borders, a natural amphitheater, and defined major spaces as settings for growing collections of plants and sculpture.

“I built LongHouse to share as a case study because I feel being in a space is more rewarding than even fine photography,” Mr. Larsen said in a recent email. “Rarely I sense a conflict with LongHouse also being my residence.”

In 1991, he started the LongHouse Foundation—now LongHouse Reserve—a nonprofit, public educational organization governed by a voluntary board of trustees. A year later, he opened the grounds to the public. By way of an entrance drive lined with a majestic cryptomeria allée, more than 13,000 visitors access LongHouse annually, and enjoy it just as Mr. Larsen does.

That was not the case when Mr. Tomicic discovered the property 24 years ago.

The Croatia native was living on Little Plains Road in Southampton, across the street from where Larry Rivers’s original “Legs” were on view. He quickly found himself immersed in the art world, and first visited LongHouse Reserve in the summer of 1992.

“I came with a couple friends who knew of Jack and it was a fun place to visit,” Mr. Tomicic said during a recent telephone interview. “At the time, I didn’t know four years later I would get a job here.”

Following Mr. Tomicic’s involvement with a Dale Chihuly exhibit installation at LongHouse—the first time the artist ever displayed 1,200 pieces of glass outdoors—Mr. Larsen recognized talent when he saw it, and hired the burgeoning curator as executive director of the reserve in 1996. He was LongHouse’s first and only paid employee at the time.

It stayed that way for quite a while, until the garden started gaining steam on a local level, Mr. Tomicic said.

“There are many people in Southampton who’ll probably tell you they’ve never heard of LongHouse, but I would tell you then those people have probably never been or heard of Montauk either. It’s just we live in our own republics of the Hamptons,” he said. “There is a solid following for this place, which Jack wanted to be a non-conforming home, a non-conforming garden and, probably, a non-conforming experience to today’s Hamptons, where everything seems to be in the billions, and thousands and thousands of square feet.

“Here, everything is manageable.”

The garden Mr. Larsen planted at LongHouse in 1986 looks like child’s play compared to the vision that exists today, much in thanks to arborist Ray Smith, who has “touched every single tree,” according to Mr. Tomicic.

“He is our director of horticulture, and he really speaks the language of Jack Larsen,” Mr. Tomicic said. “That is, when he started this property, the idea was it was meant to be good looking in the summer but also to be very interesting in the wintertime. And he had a limited palette of plant material to work with.”

That is where Mr. Smith stepped in. The president of Ray Smith & Associates in Southampton first came across LongHouse 10 years ago—though it feels like yesterday, he recalled during a recent telephone interview.

“I didn’t know what LongHouse was. I just saw a sign and this allée of cryptomeria, which were in very bad shape. And I said, ‘Wow, they need some help,’” he said with a chuckle. “I went up front, found an office and told them what was wrong with the cryptomeria and they asked me if I would be interested in taking it on—the plant health care—and I said, ‘Sure!’ That was my biggest challenge coming into it.”

Over the years, Mr. Smith and his crew have installed deer fencing, allowing a greater variety of vegetation in the garden—from specimen broadleaf evergreens, ornamental trees and shrubs to specimen deciduous plants, 2,000 feet of hemlock hedge and 300 varieties of daffodils alone.

As for a total number of plant species, it is impossible to say, he reported.

“We’re adding plants all the time, every year. The place constantly changes. It’s really all Jack. I tell Jack what can’t go there,” Mr. Smith said. “You can’t possibly see this place on one visit, you have to come back several times during the growing season to really appreciate the types of plants we have, the different flowers and colors that Jack puts together. And he’s tireless. For a man his age, he’s just on the go all the time, and he’s got new ideas all the time. And we try to make them work. That’s our job.”

The reserve—which features more than two dozen areas, each with a different personality—also doubles as a living, breathing sculpture garden. For new and returning visitors alike, it is easy to lose one’s way and accidentally stumble upon Yoko Ono’s white concrete chess set, “Play It by Trust,” or the 33-foot-high “Fly’s Eye Dome” by Buckminster Fuller.

Some of LongHouse’s more memorable pieces and areas, such as Yue Minjun’s “Chinese Contemporary Warriors” and the Pyramid Plateau, are no longer on view, allowing room for seven new sculptures this season, including Neil Noland’s repurposed oil tank “Green RE: Genesis/Lake Eden/Black Mountain” “The Invisible,” a life-sized figure slightly immersed in water by Enrique Martinez Celaya; “Untitled,” by Jun Kaneko, a series of four 10-foot-tall and one 12-foot-tall ceramic totems that will replace the Pyramids; and the original Larry Rivers “Legs,” at one time Mr. Tomicic’s neighbor.

“The garden’s changed, the garden’s matured and we continued and expanded this program of art in the garden because that is really what, I feel, makes it interesting and makes it worthwhile for people to come back,” the executive director said. “Every year, we remove pieces because that is what we need to do to keep it interesting.”

Earlier this month, Peter’s Pond wasn’t much more than a drained hole in the ground with a crane. Today, it is home to George Rickey’s “Six Lines in a T II,” which is Mr. Tomicic’s favorite sculpture among the new installations. Fueled by wind and gravity, the piece’s 18-foot-long blades dance in the air, moving independently, pivoting, sweeping and spinning with slow, autonomous precision.

“It’s like they defy the laws of gravity,” Mr. Tomicic said of the blades. “It is a fabulous piece.”

Another notable addition is “The Arch of Life” by Russian-born, Mattituck-based artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The piece—which is 6¼ feet high, 24½ feet long and 2½ feet wide—includes five sculptures representative of the different stages of human existence: a human head born from an egg, a frightened person on all fours wearing a lion mask, a person carrying a crate on his back with a light inside, a person crawling over a fence and forever stuck in this state, and a tired person unable to stand up or change his position.

“They are all on a bridge made of aluminum,” Mr. Tomicic said. “It’s quite touching to actually see.”

Lastly, “Would That I Wish For” by Marco Remec consists of approximately 70 convex dome mirrors affixed to a 20-foot-tall pole, which will be installed in a new area called the Grey Garden, according to Mr. Tomicic. It is one of Mr. Larsen’s favorite spaces in the reserve, as are all of his new projects, he said, including a moss garden in the northwest corner and, near the Sol LeWitt sculpture, about 50 feet of the Red Path that is now covered in pergola—and, eventually, white vines and roses.

“Jack came up with the great idea of adding a pergola to the garden. It was one of the best additions to the garden in quite some time,” Mr. Tomicic said. “And when I say that, I mean that it was so practical and inexpensive and done fast and has a huge impact. I think it will be a great highlight.”

In the garden, the 88-year-old Mr. Larsen said he spends “as much time as possible year around, although this now includes sitting in the sun.”

There is nowhere like LongHouse Reserve on the East End or Long Island at large, Ms. Benson said. It is a cohesion of natural beauty by the gardens and imposed beauty by the art, said.

“I do remember the first time I visited LongHouse. It was in the late ’90s. I had the pleasure of being with Bob Wilson and Susan Sontag, accompanying them when Bob went there to give a talk about his one man “Hamlet” that was shown at Lincoln Center that summer,” she recalled during a recent interview. “I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and obviously went back again and again and again. I believe the second time I visited was for one of the Dale Chihuly huge, fabulous outdoor installations, and from then on I was hooked.”

Whenever the avid gardener and fashion designer visits, she makes sure she sees her two favorite spots—Kreye Canyon and the amphitheater. Mr. Smith always tries to walk LongHouse as a whole, particularly when it isn’t open to the public.

“What I really like is going there on Sunday mornings when no one’s around and going through the whole place with my dog. It’s like going to church, you know?” Mr. Smith said. “And I love working with Jack. It’s like an endless supply of great ideas.”

He laughed, adding, “You know, I’ve almost got the allée of cryptomeria back. It’s taken 10 years, and it’s been a challenge, but we’re getting there.”

Soon, visitors will enter LongHouse via a flawless driveway and see a reserve and sculpture garden that will continue to thrive and grow. But, going forward, a top concern is maintaining the property as its popularity grows.

“As a result of high traffic and more visitors, we actually lost a good number of grass paths because we cannot keep the grass good looking. So instead of grass, we have to put in gravel or different surfaces. So that’s one unintended result of people learning about us,” Mr. Tomicic said. “Let’s hope we find the optimal number of visitors so that we are able to manage the grounds properly, as well as deliver what people come here to see.”

They come for serenity, he said. They come for beauty and elegance. And, above all else, they come for the same reason Mr. Larsen built LongHouse 25 years ago: for a slice of peace.

LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton will open for the season on April 30. Hours are Wednesdays and Saturdays from 2 to 5 p.m., through mid-October. In July and August only, the reserve is open Wednesdays through Saturdays. Admission is $10, $8 for seniors and free for members and children under 12 accompanied by an adult. For more information, call (631) 329-3568, or visit longhouse.org.