Norman Jaffe

Norman Jaffe opened his practice in Bridgehampton in 1973 and became the most prolific architect in the Hamptons of his time, designing more than 50 houses on the South Fork between 1967 and his death in 1993. His houses are sculptural and shingled, with natural wood inside and, as Chris Coy of Barnes Coy put it, often triangular geometry in the roofs. The New York Times credited him with pioneering the rustic modernist Hamptons house. His synagogue for the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton, Gates of the Grove, was called his greatest work by Paul Goldberger.

Jaffe's record is also a well-documented case of a modern architect's South Fork houses disappearing. Several have been demolished since 2003, others renovated in ways that removed the natural wood interiors that defined them, and at least one has been the subject of a contested demolition hearing.

Who he was

Jaffe (1932–1993) studied at Berkeley, worked for Joseph Esherick in California, then moved to New York in 1961 to work for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and later Philip Johnson. He became a Fellow of the AIA in 1991. Alastair Gordon's monograph, Romantic Modernist: The Life and Work of Norman Jaffe, Architect (2005), accompanied a Parrish Art Museum retrospective. Columbia's Avery Library holds his archive: drawings, presentations and photographs for more than 80 projects.

The documented South Fork houses

Perlbinder House, Potato Road, Sagaponack (1970). An oceanfront house published in Architectural Record's houses issue of 1971.

Jaffe's own houses, Bridgehampton. Ocean Road (1971), later heavily renovated; Sams Creek Road (1978), one of six Jaffe houses on that street, later added to by another architect; and Sea Farm on Lumber Lane (1986).

Water Mill. A first speculative house on Pointe Mecox Lane (1975), renovated and added to in 2017 by his son, Miles Jaffe; other Pointe Mecox houses whose interior wood was later painted or covered with drywall; and a 1980 house on Lawrence Court restored to a design by Roger Ferris. See Water Mill and Mecox Bay.

Montauk. A 1975 house on Old Montauk Highway that won an AIA New York award and was published in Architectural Record in 1977. Jaffe told The New York Times in 1986 that a Meadow Lane client came to him because of a praised Montauk house.

Southampton. A cluster of oceanfront houses on Meadow Lane from the late 1970s to 1993, and the Parsonage Pond enclave (1973), where Jaffe developed the land and pond but later houses were built by others.

Demolition and alteration

The USModernist catalog records Jaffe houses demolished on Meadow Lane (2003 and later), Heller Lane in East Hampton (about 2016; his son called it Jaffe's favorite), Water Hole Road (2017, after sale to the Town of East Hampton) and Further Lane (2025).

The 2021 hearing on 88 Meadow Lane in Southampton Village shows how these cases turn. The house, from the late 1970s, sits in a historic district, so demolition required a certificate of appropriateness from the Village's Architectural Review and Historic Preservation Board. About fifteen years earlier, Barnes Coy Architects had renovated it and added a wing; the owner and the renovating architect both told the board it was now less than half Jaffe's work, while preservation groups and Paul Goldberger argued it remained a Jaffe house. The house's 1979 certificate of occupancy also required landscaping, maintained in perpetuity, to screen it from the road — a condition that runs with the property. Authorship percentage, district status and old approval conditions were all part of the record.

What to look for

• Triangular roof geometry and shingled walls; the Shingle Style abstracted rather than copied.
• Natural wood — walls, floors, ceilings — as the dominant interior finish. Where it has been painted or covered, much of the character is gone.
• Landscape as part of the design. At 88 Meadow Lane, Preservation Long Island counted Jaffe's landscape among the property's historic resources.
• See postwar modernism.

How to verify an attribution

The Avery Library archive and Gordon's monograph are the primary references. Then read the building department file for the original permit, each later renovation and its architect, and the certificate of occupancy with any conditions. In a village historic district, the review board's minutes record what has been approved. A renovation by another firm should be described as such; the 88 Meadow Lane hearing shows that the split can become the central question.

Considering a Jaffe house?

Request a property brief from The Roebling Research Desk that tests the attribution against the archive, quantifies how much of the original survives, and reads the approvals and conditions that come with the parcel.