Published Works
"AMERICAN IDYLL" (Elle Decor, July-August, 2004)
A house with a past demands an owner who can imagine its future. For designer Steven Gambrel that means more than simply bringing the wiring up to code and buying the latest plasma screen.
Located not far from the waterfront on the old Long Island whaling town of Sag Harbor, Gambrel's country house has a potent history, It was erected in 1810 as a Methodist church, transformed in 1835 into a Catholic chapel, and converted in 1855 to a school. After a brief period as a boarding house, it was owned by an Orthodox Jewish couple with ten children, and somewhere along the line it has also been cut in half and transported across town to another site. By the time Gambrel and his partner, entrepreneur Chris Connor, found the house three years ago, its original split-cypress shingles masked by 1950s asbestos siding the place had been abandoned for three decades. Time had not been kind, and real estate agents went out of their way to avoid it. "It was a little squalid," Gambrel remembers, shaking his head.
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