Richard Meier

Richard Meier's South Fork record is three houses spread across half a century. Two are early and influential: the Hoffman House on Georgica Road in East Hampton, completed in 1967, and the Saltzman House on Spaeth Lane, completed in 1969, which won a national AIA First Honor Award in 1971. The third, on Flying Point Road in Water Mill, was completed in 2015.

The East Hampton pair belong to the moment when Meier and Charles Gwathmey were grouped as two of the "New York Five," architects working from Le Corbusier's white villas of the 1920s. Both men tested those ideas first in small East Hampton houses.

The documented houses

Hoffman House, Georgica Road, East Hampton (1967). Commissioned in 1966 and published in Architectural Record's houses issue of 1969. In the 1990s, the architects Peter Stamberg and Paul Aferiat designed an addition of about 3,000 square feet. A buyer today is looking at a Meier house and a later, separately authored wing.

Saltzman House, Spaeth Lane, East Hampton (1969). Commissioned in 1967. It received an AIA National First Honor Award in 1971 and an AIA New York Merit Award in 1972. A pool was added in 2006. The designer David Netto, speaking at the East Hampton Historical Society in 2019, described it as a house that tracks the light through the day and becomes a lantern at night.

Flying Point House, Flying Point Road, Water Mill (2015). Commissioned in 2007 and completed eight years later — a reminder that the firm's South Fork work did not end with the 1960s.

What to look for

• The Le Corbusier lineage the New York Five shared: white, abstract volumes that read as objects in the landscape.
• Light as the subject — the quality Netto singled out at the Saltzman House.
• Compact original houses in the 1960s; both have since been added to.
• See postwar modernism and contemporary modern.

Alteration history

Both early houses have been changed: the Hoffman House by a substantial addition by other architects, the Saltzman House by a later pool. Inspect the exterior envelope — finishes, flashing and glazing — on its own terms. In a house whose identity is white surface and glass, replacement windows or a change of finish alter the design more than their cost suggests.

How to verify an attribution

Use the firm's project records, Architectural Record's houses issues, AIA award records and the East Hampton or Southampton building department file. The file should show the original permit and, separately, each addition with its own architect of record. Marketing copy that calls an enlarged house "a Meier" should be read against that file.

Considering a Meier house?

Request a property brief from The Roebling Research Desk that separates Meier's original design from later additions, documents the exterior envelope's condition, and places the house among the few comparable South Fork modernist landmarks.