19th Century Timber in a 21st Century Home
by Kathy Fleming
The Montauk Sun, June 2003

When Dick Cavett and Carrie Nye’s century-old residence in Montauk burned completely to the ground in 1999, it would have been the end of an era for most people.

Full if irreplaceable, beloved belongings they had gathered over a lifetime and placed carefully throughout a home built with now rare materials, the couple could have started over again in any style they preferred.

What they preferred was what he had. So instead they chose to recreate the original…something that “almost never happens,” according to Jim Boorstein of Traditional Line, the architectural restoration firm that implemented the resurrection.

“Many people will rebuild to the original condition if there is partial damage, but this house was completely gone. Only the chimney and the footprint of the house remained,” Boorstein said. “We didn’t’ know if it was possible to recreate the former structure just as it was. It was something none of us had done before, but Ms. Nye was driven. I think she’s very happy with the way it turned out.”

The house, called Tick Hall, is the last in a group of seven shingle style houses known as the Montauk Point Association Houses. Designed by McKim, Mead and White and built between 1881 and 1883, they were constructed to serve as hunting and fishing cottages for moneyed New Yorkers. Even the famed Frederick Law Olmstead was commissioned to plan the site.

Cavett and Nye first rented and then purchased the home in the mid-19602, just before Cavett’s TV talk show career took off to earn him 11 Emmy nominations (winning 3) and interviews with distinguished guests such as Lawrence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, Noel Coward, Janis Joplin, Groucho Marx, and Alfred Hitchcock. Both Cavett and Ms. Nye, a noted actress who had moved her Mississippi Delta family heirlooms into the house, had created a haven that would be home for the next 30 years.

The house was, and is, a charming piece of architecture. As Architectural Digest wrote in 2001, the historic home had “wide porches, embraced the sea, generous dormers, exquisite detailing, and abundant light.” The rebuilding took three years of intense research and minute attention to detail to recreate what was there before…even down to the slight ceiling sag in one room or a certain squeak in a specific stair tread.

It literally took a large supporting cast. James Hadley of Wank Adams Salvin Associates oversaw the project with project architect Keith Gianakopoilis. Jim Kim from Montauk and his firm Met At Work Construction built the exterior and framework.

“Doing the actual rebuilding was the easy part,” Boorstein said. “The most difficult part was the preliminary work. Old photos from friends and others were gathered so we could study every little detail, each time focusing on a different part of the picture. There were a million little details that we had to pay attention to and get correct.”

Because Tick Hall had been built primarily of original-growth heart pine, which is no longer lumbered, the restoration professionals turned to Goodwin Heart Pine Company, a Florida-based company specializing in antique longleaf pine flooring, millwork and stair parts. The wood is no longer lumbered because the foresee were essentially cut down more than a century ago to build America.

According to co-owner Carol Goodwin, who is quite a student of longleaf pine and frequently speaks to community, design and building groups, this tree once dominated the United States to make up 41 percent of the coastal southeastern landmass. “What many people really enjoy is the story and romance of this wood. Today less than 10,000 acres remain in protected preserves. In the 1700s and 1800s there were about 90 million acres of longleaf pine across the Southeast, but these giant forests were clear-cut to extinction to build American homes and factories and many of the Victorian hotels in Europe,” she said.

Loggers went into the forests and manually cut down each tree and pulled them by horse-drawn wagon down to the nearest waterway. The logs were then lashed together and floated downriver to mills, but some of the denser logs got away and sank to the bottom.

Goodwin is the only established company that dives for these logs and brings them up by hand. Because the logs are perfectly preserved in the cool river waters, the resulting lumber is pristine and produces the same hard, strong wood that was originally used in Tick Hall. These longleaf trees had up to 500 years growing time and grew only one inch every 30 years thus they were mainly heart pine, which provides a striking grain, color and durability. “Even then the wood was valued for its beautiful rich red color and tight grain, but more important for its near indestructibility,” Goodwin said. “This wood was used to build industrial plants, ships and the caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge, but it also was specified for Jefferson’s Monticello and Washington’s Mount Vernon.”

While Goodwin’s specialty wood is often used in restorations and renovations, including Ernest Hemingway’s Key West home, it also is becoming trendy with homeowners and designers in search of the exceptional for new homes.

Heart pine was a logical choice for the Montauk oceanfront home and the harsh elements it endures. Goodwin provided most of the flooring and some of the other woodwork with both river-recovered™ heart pine and wood reclaimed form old buildings. Boorstein said traditional finishes were used to bring out authentic tones and surface sheens.

“We knew we couldn’t’ achieve a realistic appearance with new wood so there was never a question that we needed old wood,” he said. “The original growth lumber was a critical piece to achieving our goal. And it turned out incredibly well.”

It was imperative to Nye that the same type of materials be used throughout the rebuilding process. “As long as we used the same materials, as long as we didn’t fake or cut corners or Disney-fy, I thought we’d have a reasonable chance of succeeding,” she said later.

From the charred rubble the restoration experts found a few remnants to measure, including a piece of a wall with an old shingle, the beveled siding from the first floor, twisted door hardware, and a fireplace tile. After interviewing the homeowners and houseguests and examining old snapshots, the restorers set to work reconstructing just about every piece of Tick Hall, from door knobs to stair rails to stained glass.

Just as some of the specialists are frequently involved in installing period rooms at museums and others provide luxury flooring for new homes, the lengthy rebirth became a labor of lobe that left everyone pleased with the end result. The rare restoration continues to receive exposure, including a current one-hour documentary showing on area PBS stations.

For homeowners Cavett and Nye, they wanted their home back and that’s exactly what they got. Now they just want to enjoy the serenity for which it was built.

[Woods] [History] [Gallery] [Products] [About Us] [How To] [Contact Us] [FAQs] [Sitemap] [Home]