Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jul 22, 2025

After a Herculean Renovation, Architect Wallace Harrison’s Landmarked Home Seeks a New Caretaker

After a Herculean Renovation, Architect Wallace Harrison’s Landmarked Home Seeks a New Caretaker

Once headed for demolition, the storied Long Island residence by the Rockefeller Center designer is on the market for $5,999,000.

Wallace Harrison designed Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera House, the McGraw-Hill Building, the Time & Life Building, the Exxon Building, and the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York. He also had a substantial hand in the creation of Rockefeller Center and the United Nations Headquarters, but you can’t live in any of those places. You can, however, live in the architect’s exceptionally graceful summer home in Melville on Long Island, respectfully and tastefully restored and expanded by the firm SchappacherWhite and currently for sale for $5,999,000.

Harrison purchased the site in 1931, living initially in the innovative Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher–designed Aluminaire House, which he had acquired and carted off to this property after its initial exhibition. Over the next decade or so, he built a house of his own in a number of stages, adding on rooms and annexing outbuildings, including a caretaker’s cottage and stables (The Aluminaire House eventually departed and is now in sunny retirement in the hands of the Palm Springs Art Museum).



The Harrison House surrounds a green courtyard on three sides.

Harrison described the residence as "an exercise in how to fit circles together," producing an irregular design of several curved volumes alternating with geometric wings. The interiors provide winning views of the home’s eight woodsy acres, terraced hillside landscaping, a pond, and a miniature golf course.

He is believed to have found inspiration for the showcase living room-with its 16-foot ceiling, capacious window bay, terrazzo tiling, and wooden dance floor-in his work on the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, but he also experimented with things at home before he built them elsewhere (no surprise for an architect with a studio down the hall).



The curving wall of floor-to-ceiling glass in the living room offers a grand vista.

Harrison was well connected, linked by marriage to the Rockefellers and spending much of his career as court architect to that family, but his great talent brought him into eminent company of all sorts. Artists were frequent guests at the home: Marc Chagall and Alexander Calder came by repeatedly, and the latter is rumored to have had his first show at the property. There’s a Mary Callery sculpture on the living room wall, prudently moved inside by the current homeowners. Fernand Léger lived at the house for a time, designing an ethereal skylight in the current dining room, and was thought to have painted the bottom of the pool.



A sculpture by Mary Callery, one of the home’s many distinguished guests, hangs in the living room.

If you’ve seen any image of the home, it’s unquestionably that of Harrison, his dog, and urban planner Robert Moses beneath the living room’s curved, Léger-like canvas Les Plongeurs (The Divers). There’s a complicated trail of attribution for this piece, as Caroline Rob Zaleski writes in her book Long Island Modernism: 1930-1980.

"Both Harrisons were unabashed copyists of paintings they admired," she writes. "Only the cognoscenti knew whether the painting on the wall was a real Miró of Léger. Even the large canvas about the living room cannot be attributed directly to Léger. Ellen Harrison and her daughter produced the large work from a graphite, ink, and gouache cartoon on graph paper that Léger had given them."

The work was great, whatever the case, and is now in the collection of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, but its spirit lives on in a three-dimensional revival, a steel sculpture by artist Brandon D’Leo.



Brandon D'Leo's Steeling Léger offers dramatic focus to the living room and replaces a canvas that previously hung there. The current owner notes that when they asked the artist and sculptor for ideas, D'Leo determined that the painting could be recreated with steel. After creating a mockup of the living room in his studio, D'Leo spent a year creating the piece and determining how to hang it on the wall-the work even replicates an original paint drip.

In 1975, the neighbors Harold and Hester Diamond (parents of the Beastie Boys’ Mike D) purchased the Harrison House for the supreme bargain of $12,000. (Being art dealers, they can’t have minded the 12 Léger oil paintings in the boiler room.) The home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The subsequent owner, however, had different aims-namely, running the property into the ground such that it could be demolished and sold.

In 2003, Larry and Lori Spiegel bought the house, which had been on the market for years, the weekend they saw it. Larry noted that the house was "essentially abandoned" with trees growing through holes in the roof and animals inhabiting the vacant space. "[The owner] was hoping that if the house was uninhabitable, that it could then be knocked down," he continues. "We saw it and fell in love with it because we were stupid; if we were smarter, we never would have done this."

The Spiegels spent two years engaging architects for particular repairs, but the work remained daunting. "We were really on the point of giving up. Parents were afraid to let their kids play at my house," says Larry. He later encountered architect Steve Schappacher in an architecture magazine in a feature about the restoration of Ulrich Franzen’s Castle House on the shores of Long Island Sound. "I left him a voicemail where I basically said, ‘You’re our last hope,’" says Larry. "He was out here in two days."



New clerestory windows admit abundant light to the kitchen.

It was a Herculean undertaking. Larry recalls, "I think I had something like 4,000 emails dealing with the period of construction. We used to have weekly meetings with 12 people here."

There were manifold issues, some relating to the building’s sheer age, others to its original purpose as a seasonal home. "We could never get the temperature over 55 degrees in the winter," says Larry. "There was no air conditioning. Every system had to be replaced: the plumbing, the electric, on and on." Some original concrete walls couldn’t be insulated or filled with wiring or ducts; radiant floor heating was the solution. All of the windows were replaced, a task requiring a bit more effort than a stop at Home Depot: "How do you get 95 steel windows?"

There were plenty of surprises in store. The circular stepping stones around the property look artful, but turned out to be quite mundane in origin. "The rumor was that Harrison ran out of money, so a cheap way to do this was to use cesspool covers," says Larry. "When we did the renovation, we had to shut down a cesspool company to churn out 150 cesspool covers. People buy cesspools with the covers-no one buys just the covers!"



The main bedroom occupies Harrison's former studio.

The architects restored original portions of the home in beautiful detail, doubled the living space with a respectful addition, and repurposed other rooms: The former studio and office, for example, are now the main bedroom and bath. The former kitchen is now the dining room, and the stables and caretaker apartments became additional bedrooms.



The dining room is wrapped in wood.

The expansion didn’t presume to add additional circles; instead, the addition revolves around a flat, two-story, steel-framed glass wall that echoes and frames the original portion’s curves without competing with them.



Original stone walls and landscaping grace the Harrison House.

The living room’s checkerboard terrazzo tiles and wooden floors were in strong shape, as was the millwork surrounding a curved library space next to the room. The miniature golf course, which was constructed with works of art as obstacles, remains.



A curved library space adjacent to the living room features original shelving.

The art had been sold off, but the Spiegels placed new pieces around the property. The home is filled with midcentury-modern furniture redolent of Harrison’s occupancy (and the owners are open to selling some of the pieces, so ask). The residence has been used frequently in television shoots, appearing as a set in Gossip Girl, Suits, Royal Pains, and other shows.

Larry notes that the home proved an ideal escape during COVID-19, which brought renewed attention to the fact that "anytime you turn, you’re always turning into a window to the outside." They hope to find a buyer who appreciates this historic treasure as much as they do: "We’d very much like to be sure that whoever bought it is someone who could be trusted with it."

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
×