Gold Rush

Alex Papachristidis gives summerhouse style a gilded makeover in his sister’s Hamptons home, where a parade of fine art and finishes dazzles in the brilliant ocean light.

By Stephen Wallis

Photographs by William Abranowicz

April 28, 2020

https://www.veranda.com/home-decorators/a32166032/alex-papachristidis-hamptons-ny-house-tour/

The first thing you notice when you enter Ophelia and Bill Rudin’s oceanfront home on the East End of Long Island is the gold and silver tones. Everywhere. Not just the walls and furnishings but “every sheet, every napkin, every dish, everything,” says Alex Papachristidis, the esteemed decorator and Ophelia’s brother, who has been designing residences for the Rudins for more than 30 years. “When we started, I asked Ophelia, ‘What colors would you like?’ She said gold, silver, and white. And that’s the whole house.”

The result is a kind of unrelenting—and ultra­refined—radiance, an eternal sunshine conjured by two very compatible minds. As both siblings will tell you, they are extremely close. Nine years older, Ophelia calls Alex her baby brother, whom she helped raise. “Alex was born with an innate aesthetic sense, and from the time he was a little guy, he’s been our Beau Brummell,” she says, referencing the Regency- era English tastemaker. “He has helped each member of our family develop their own sense of style.”

In Ophelia’s case, that’s a mix of comfort and unabashed glamour. “What Alex gets about me is that I love things that are aesthetically glamorous,” she says. “Perhaps because I’m a romantic.”

The home’s neutral palette and glimmering surfaces complement the light and views of this extraordinary setting, with dunes and ocean on one side and Mecox Bay on the other. Located near the village of Bridgehampton, the parcel was acquired by the Rudins in the late 1970s. At the time, it was occupied by a modest dwelling that had been owned by Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and had survived the infamous 1938 hurricane. But the family house the Rudins built to replace it was less fortunate when a devastating 1998 nor’easter hit, causing irreparable damage.

For a decade and a half, the property sat empty. Then several years ago, Ophelia and Bill decided to build anew by the ocean, to create the home where they would eventually retire.

In early discussions with Alex and architect Kathrine (Kitty) McCoy, Ophelia made clear that she did not want a typical shingled Hamptons home. As inspiration, she offered up photos of a stucco- and-limestone home in the Caribbean.

Three years later, the house was complete, featuring a white stucco facade with Jerusalem limestone trim and floors throughout in a variety of patterns and all radiant heated. The roof is cedar shingles, “to bring it down a notch,” Papachristidis says, “and make sure it doesn’t feel out of place in the Hamptons.”

Raised on stilts, most of the 6,000-square-foot residence occupies a single floor, 22 feet above sea level, and is built to withstand major storms. The walls of some lower-level spaces are designed to break away and allow surging seas to pass beneath the home, preserving the main living areas and bedrooms. The grounds, overseen by landscape designer Edmund Hollander, are planted with minimal color, focusing on indigenous plants, hardy herbs, and olive trees.

When it came to the interiors, once they settled on the gold and silver conceit, Alex enlisted artists to create one-of-a-kind commissions to suit the scheme, including such distinctive touches as a spectacular hand-molded and gilt ceramic chandelier by Eve Kaplan, a pair of Hervé Van der Straeten light fixtures composed of clusters of bronze discs that hang like jewelry, and a living room ceiling that admits diffused natural light during the day and at night, illuminated from above, becomes a glowing light box.

Everything in the house strikes an exquisite balance between relaxed and refined. “We’re a casual family, but we like to live very formally, so there’s a lot of attention to detail,” says Alex. Ophelia adds, “We swim in the morning, play biriba in the afternoons, and enjoy the grandkids when they can come for dinner. Then it’s Groundhog Day, and we start the whole thing all over again.”