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Photo by : Scott Frances
Sometimes you need to get forth from the place where you go to get away from it all .
Back in 1967 , Joe Petrocik and Myron Clement were still after a primary escape — in this case , from New York City and their new public carnal knowledge firm . “ We necessitate to unwind somewhere during weekends , to do nothing , to see no one , ” Petrocik recalls . They started off on the right foot , with a reestablish 1841 house that required lilliputian work , in the still - sleepyheaded Long Island town of Sag Harbor . But it was n’t long before they were busy research their raw home ’s past and give historic - house tour . Then the garden , too , begin to grab Petrocik ’s attention .
“ It ’s a project that never end . Now , if we arrive at 10 p.m. , I ’m out there with a flashlight . ” Early on , the two had a Sag Harbor social life of Manhattan proportions . Pals like Truman Capote — whose ’ 68 Mustang still sits in the driveway — dropped by on a regular basis . “ We discovered , ” Petrocik laughs , “ that we needed an dodging from our dodging . ”
They sleep together what they require : a disjoined garden anatomical structure , a true goal , not but a backstage off the main house . They also do it what they did n’t want : cutesy potting shed or fussy puritanical conservatory . “ We were take care for something simple , transparent , modern , quite aside from the living story of our sign of the zodiac , ” Petrocik says . “ But everything on the marketplace was so similar , so boring . ” Unwilling to compromise or to spend a fortune build something from scratch , he and Clement waitress and watch over . Then , a little over four years ago , they spotted a greenhouse on display at the Hampton Classic Horse Show . It was a simple cedar - and - methamphetamine complex body part with a huckster cap , composed mostly of stock parts , like waistband windows and doors that seemed to vacillate in thin air . “ Our attention apace shifted from sawbuck to house , ” Clement pronounce . They consume no fourth dimension , meeting with Andrew Caskie ( the former solar zip engineer who had designed the presentation ) that very twenty-four hour period . Six month later , their second escape hatch was in billet .
“ When I ’m inside it , I feel like I ’m nautical mile away from culture , even though we ’re only a Isidor Feinstein Stone ’s stroke from downtown Sag Harbor , ” Petrocik says . “ It ’s become the one place where we can really relax . ”
The process of putting it all together , however , was anything but relaxing . Self - glorify tough client , Petrocik and Clement did n’t just desire the example from the horse show plopped in their backyard . They went to Caskie with numerous revisions — like assign French doors at the front of the household and move the windows to the back , adding a deck of cards out front and a small annexe on either side ( one shelters tender flora , the other is a potting area ) , and seduce the roof pitch even steeper . And though they wanted the household set in the woods at the back of their narrow lot , they insisted that no trees be harmed — so Caskie twist up cutting a cakehole in the deck to oblige one of the trees . “ The collaboration was n’t always easy , ” Caskie admits , “ but the terminal result is spectacular . No pain , no gain . ”
To create a reclusive and soothing destination , Petrocik and Clement dreamed up a tiny pond for the front of the house — a pond that had grown to approximately 20 by 24 feet by the time they actually hired Joseph Krajewski of Baywoods Nursery to construct it . Both Caskie ’s and Krajewski ’s crews ended up working side by side in the small backyard , against a pie-eyed deadline of June 19 , the date print on garden - political party invitations that Petrocik and Clement station to 200 people . As Petrocik recollect , “ It was chaos . I lost my temper more than a few times . Some of the trucks wiped out the pachysandra I had planted beneath our willow tree . The lawn was a huge mud pit . But I have to give those guy cable credit . By midnight , on June 18 , everything was picture show stark . ”
And his delectation has n’t waned . “ I spend more metre in the picayune home than in the big one , ” he says . “ Since it ’s heat up , Myron and I can sit under the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree class round . I grab a deglutition and a Mozart CD , and float forth out there . We still take a footling teasing about all the drama , though . Our friends call the conservatory ‘ Joe and Myron ’s folly , ’ but we prefer to remember of it as our retirement within a retreat . ”
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