An appreciation of Andrew Geller's homes

When celebrated architect Andrew Geller died last month at the age of 87, he not only had established himself as something of an architectural visionary but left a special mark on Long Island.

After his first commission in 1953 -- a conventionally designed modified ranch in Great Neck -- he released his imagination and became famous for affordable, easy-to-build beach homes as well as other playful, modernistic structures that reflected the optimism of the times. His imaginative creations in exotic shapes were compared to everything from Mayan pyramids to giant brassieres.

Maybe that's one reason they evoke such strong emotions in their owners.

"I always feel like I'm intoxicated when I'm there," says Philip Monaghan, a retired fashion industry marketing executive who fondly details his restoration of a Geller creation known as the Frank house, which he uses as a second home on Fire Island.

Others who owned Geller-

designed homes, such as former Newsday editor Aurelie Dwyer Stack, felt the same and often said so when she drove up to the house in Mattituck. "She would get out of the car and say, 'I just love it here,' " Meg Maguire, a retired consultant living in Florida, says of her deceased stepmother.

The exact number of homes Geller designed is hard to determine, says Geller's grandson, Jake Gorst, a Northport filmmaker finishing up a documentary on the subject. He estimates there were about 80 individual homes on Long Island built, in addition to the 200 "Leisurama" vacation homes constructed at a subdivision in Montauk and once marketed at Macy's.

"He was truly an original," says Anne Surchin, former president of the Peconic Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture and a co-author of "Houses of the Hamptons 1880 to 1930." "Nobody did beach houses like Andrew Geller. Not with that kind of whimsy and creativity . . . and he used geometry to express it."

Gorst says he knows of only about 20 Geller homes remaining on Long Island, "but I keep finding more."

One reason is that Geller never meant -- or prepared them -- to last long. He told the buyer of a Fire Island home that, with rough beach weather, he expected it to only last 10 years. It lasted 50 and was only torn down last year.

He decided to expand on the triangular A-frame idea in 1955, when a friend, Betty Reese, mentioned that she wanted a better beach house than the renovated chicken coop she was renting in Sagaponack. But she had little money, a fact Geller accommodated by reducing the amount of glass and wood used in construction.

Geller's creation on her behalf was both inexpensive and charming. When a picture of it appeared in The New York Times, readers thought it was a model home and caused a traffic jam along the South Fork coming to see it.

"Poor Betty," Geller once said. "She should have charged admission."