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Towers and turrets for the modern age

BY DONNA ROGERS | Special to Newsday

May 2, 2008

Carla Kretschmann says she and her husband, Peter, wanted "a house that would give us a sense of permanence" in designing their French Normandy-style house in Lloyd Harbor. The tower is 12 feet in diameter and spirals up three stories. (Newsday Photo / Michael E. Ach / April 30, 2008)

In the collection of magazine clips and photographs that Faye Guercio gave her architect for her home renovation, she began to notice an inadvertent recurrence of turrets and towers. It wasn't long before she realized she wanted one, too.

Faye Guercio and her husband aren't that unusual. In the past 20 years, their architect, East Islip's Lee Jacobsen, has been designing homes in and around the area. His plans almost always included a tower or turret, especially on a Tudor or Victorian. "I would love to have one in almost any one of my designs," he says. "Or maybe even two."

That's because towers and turrets can add a whimsical facet to a home. Still, local contractors say the cost to build them is high compared to a simple four-sided room. This limits their prevalence and ratchets up their value. No wonder supermodel Christie Brinkley's Bridgehampton estate - Tower Hill - is on the market for $30 million: The standout feature is a parapeted, five-story tower, which has views of its 20-plus acres of lush lawns and the shoreline.

A two-story tower of gray stone, stucco and brick on a 1928 Tudor Revival in Garden City, the owners say, adds grandeur to the front entry. A curving slate pathway leads to its spherical entrance, with its arched door and cone-shaped roof. Inside, a sweeping circular staircase has carved oak detailing, wrought-iron banisters and a dramatic curved second-floor landing with leaded stained-glass windows. It overlooks the circular foyer below.

The house was designed by pioneering architect Olive Tjaden at the age of 23. From the 1920s to 1940s, she supervised the design of more than 400 homes in the Garden City area. "Tjaden did a lot of drama," says Karen Guendjoian, licensed saleswoman with Coach Realtors Fennessy Associates in Garden City. "It seems in every house she designed, she put in elements that are uniquely different."

Fifteen years ago, Nadia Hazarian and her husband, a physician, who lived in a ranch in Garden City, saw the house and its tower. "My husband fell in love with it. It was a one-of-a-kind house. It was a dream for us," she says. They raised their son (now also a doctor) there.

The house is on the market, listed at $1.995 million with Coach Realtors Fennessy.

Cramped no more

In East Islip, stay-at-home mother Faye Guercio, 48, her husband, Rich, 50, an attorney, and their two teenage children, had been feeling cramped in their old house - a split level. Their request to their architect was a master suite, a dining area that is expandable for entertaining, and, reminiscent of Faye Guercio's youth in North Carolina, a porch with a swing. She says she also was hoping for a place to continue her hobby: painting.

After being given the assignment, Jacobsen, who lives across the street, often sat on his porch and dreamed about the design.

When it comes to towers and turrets, "there's nothing scientific about the size," Jacobsen says, "but the challenge is to get the proportions right." The trick is that you don't want a pencil-thin appendage or a too-fat protrusion that overwhelms, he adds. Typically 12 feet to 15 feet in diameter, these structures can range from 10 feet to 20 feet, depending upon the size of the house, he adds.

Turrets and towers lend themselves to many traditional styles. Historically, they are found on Victorians and Romantic styles. They tend to be incorporated into asymmetrical, informally structured homes. Laura Smiros, a partner with Smiros&Smiros Architects Llp, in Glen Cove, says towers would not be appropriate, for instance, on a symmetrical Georgian-style home.

Shapes also vary widely, from square to round to octagonal. Hard and fast rules do not dictate their form to match a particular architectural style. "It's all haute couture," says Smiros' husband and partner, Jim Smiros.

Where do you want it?

Rules do not command their placement: They may be off-center, centered, in the front or back of a house, reaching up four stories from the ground, or, just as possibly, popping up off the roof. Overall, they provide "an anchor, and a visual element pops forward," says Jim Smiros.

A Smiros&Smiros-designed tower graces a French Normandy-style home built five years ago by Carla and Peter Kretschmann. Demanding jobs at global companies had required them to move seven or eight times in 20-plus years, so when they returned to New York in their mid-40s, intending to retire, they chose to build on a waterfront site in Lloyd Harbor. "We wanted a house that would give us a sense of permanence, that seemed substantial and grounded," she says.

Their round tower, 12 feet in diameter, contains a custom spiral staircase. The winding staircase connects ground-floor waterfront terraces to third-floor bedroom suites. Crowning the apex is a dome adorned with a timber cross and a chandelier. Just below it, a ribbon of windows at the second story streams with sunlight.

The stucco- and stone-towered home represents "solidity, substance and permanence," she says. "And for people that moved around for many years, it's what we wanted to finally come home to."

Interior space in towers and turrets is versatile. They house anything from sitting rooms to dining rooms. In a recent new Shingle-style oceanfront home in Montauk, Michael D'Arcangelis, principal of Unique Design Home Builders in East Islip, built a 16-foot wide, five-sided tower. A library with angled bookshelves on the second floor and a room with a 16-seat round table on the ground floor have panoramic views of the ocean.

Shelter Island views