Fire Island Modernist Quotes

“Gifford presented the house to Bonaguidi as a series of 'telescopic' spaces in the landscape, and his inspiration hints at the atmosphere in the Pines at this time. A telescope is a device often used for spying: it elongates when engaged in order to capture objects in its gaze.”
― Christopher Bascom Rawlins, Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction

“Gifford's early homes were delicately situated into the landscape, their rooflines arcing just above the trees. His tower houses were less self-consciously beautiful and more demanding, echoing tumult both personal and societal. The gables, hips, and arcs of Gifford's early confections gave way to a more abstract vocabulary that relied exclusively upon flat and shed roofs. Scale became intentionally ambiguous, as his influences veered toward monumental sources.”
― Christopher Bascom Rawlins, Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction

“Bathrooms that traded mirrors for glass walls invited prurience on occasion, but they also drew the inhabitant's gaze away from himself toward an increasingly threatened nature.”
― Christopher Bascom Rawlins, Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction