Chris Fisher and Blair Moritz were closing on a wonky, neglected weekend house in East Hampton, New York, in 2014 when they made their discovery. Amid the ruins of a recently demolished shed at the edge of the property, stashed between some windows piled on the ground, were the original, pencil-drawn overhead plans for the midcentury house. They were signed by Andrew Geller. “We were flying,” says Chris.

For the better part of the 1950s and ’60s, Geller, the Brooklyn-born son of Russian immigrants, dotted the beach communities near New York City with whimsical, geometrically complex vacation homes—appealing to buyers who thumbed their collective nose at the boxy orthodoxy of International Style. (He also designed a line of ultra-affordable prefab beach bungalows, sold under the name Leisurama at Macy’s.)

Although Geller interpreted modernism as singularly as other great, now-canonical outliers like John Lautner or E. Fay Jones, he is still not as well known. On Christmas Day 2011, eulogists lamented both the architect’s passing and the slowness with which his contributions were being reevaluated.

Chris, a film and TV director and producer, and Blair, a designer, knew the house they’d acquired was designed by Geller, but it had been renovated beyond recognition over the years. Finding the drawings meant they could restore it to something close to its original form. “They were like the Dead Sea scrolls,”says Chris. “It was like holding the gift of God.”

The restoration took a turn when their lives were upended. They put construction on hold—aside from a badly needed roof replacement—when a television project sent the couple and their now-four-year-old daughter, Poppy, to the West Coast. Then, in December 2017, the Thomas Fire in Ojai, California, suddenly left them homeless and destroyed most of their possessions. After the disaster, they decided to expand their plans for the Geller house back on Long Island and to turn it into an all-season residence.

Even before they found the drawings, the couple had presumed they would salvage as much of the 1,200-square-foot house, which sits on 1.1 acres, as made sense. “We just appreciate vintage things so much,” says Blair.

Chris, who had been working on the CBS crime drama Person of Interest at the time, adds that he felt a kinship with the place despite its shack-like state: Exploring the lofted attic in fall 2013, he had reveled in sight lines to the living area below and to the white oak woods beyond; the view seemed to harmonize with the television genre he was working with, in which “magic is everywhere, and you just have to look inside yourself to embrace it.”

The couple hired Brooklyn-and Richmond-based Architecture AF, as well as a team of collaborators who revere Geller, to carefully update the house, which they learned was designed in 1968 for clients Lawrence and Laura Antler. After some Googling, they reached out to Jake Gorst, an architectural historian and documentary filmmaker who appeared high in the search results as Geller’s grandson.

“I was just thrilled that they loved the house as it was,” Gorst remembers feeling when Chris first contacted him. He gave Chris and Blair digital copies of the house plans and provided some context—that the upside-down plan of common spaces over two ground- floor bedrooms was intended to give the Antlers “an exhilarating experience of being up in the trees,” for example.

The couple asked Gorst to consult on the project and to help Architecture AF cofounder Forrest Frazier synthesize his modernization ideas with history. “We had to make it a little more practical than the way an architectural historian might restore it,” Frazier says of turning the house into a year-round home.

He aimed to faithfully revive the house’s most public faces—the north, west, and south sides that passersby might see—while confining 21st-century renovations and an un-Geller-like HVAC system to the back. Joining the team was local builder and native Long Islander Robert Christensen, who had met Gorst on the set of a PBS culinary program in 2010 and had trespassed on Geller’s now famous Elkin and Pearlroth houses back in his surfing years.

The design scheme allowed them to remove an ill-conceived bathroom addition near the formal entrance, re-create the fantastical “owl-eye” and triangular windows unceremoniously destroyed in the previous remodels, and cover almost all of the surfaces in knotty cedar. Frazier pushed out the rear elevation of the house to regain the lost bathroom and rebuilt a non-historical deck covering a carport that Geller had only proposed as an optional outdoor space.

The Antler House renovation was completed this past summer. Today, it provides the family with a shelter from the various storms they have weathered. Blair says Geller’s ability to frame sunlight and views encourages slow, deliberate living, and Chris wonders whether he would have championed that philosophy had the project wrapped seamlessly.

“Geller didn’t just plop a product on the land—he built something from the inside that happens to look spectacular from the outside,” he says. “The long gestation allowed us to really understand that.”

Project Credits:

Architect: Architecture AF / @architecture.af

Restoration Consultant: Jake Gorst

Interior Designer: Logan Killen Interiors

Carpenter: Robert Christensen

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