The Bar House is raising the bar in East Hampton’s real estate market.
The eye-catching 9,000-square-foot modernist home, named for the two elongated bar-like structures stacked in perpendicular fashion to form the L-shaped structure, recently closed for $17.77 million, according to the real estate firm that found the buyer.
The sale sets a record for the town’s Northwest Woods section, located between Sag Harbor and Springs, said Brown Harris Stevens agent David Tenenbaum, who brought the buyer.
The new Bar House owner, who works in tech, will become neighbors with the likes of actor Neil Patrick Harris and fashion designer Donna Karan, said Tenenbaum.
“This property really spoke to him,” Tenenbaum said of his client. “It’s got so much privacy. It’s sited on almost 13 acres, and it’s surrounded by 500 acres of East Hampton town preserve.”
Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap the glass-and-steel house. One section offers treetop views of the landscape and provides cover for an outdoor living space below with oversized moon-like recessed lights.
The terrace contains a fireplace and an open kitchen with a pizza oven, a sink, a refrigerator, an ice maker, a built-in grill and a dining area. Around the corner is a curvilinear structure holding up that end of the “bar” with an S-curve entrance that, like an airport, leads to an interior bathroom. Outside, there are two outdoor showers.
The area overlooks a 60-foot pool.
The other section of the five-bedroom, five-bathroom, two half-bathroom dwelling is one story on ground level. There, a large living area contains 12-foot ceilings, radiant-heated bluestone floors and a double-sided fireplace — as well as a kitchen with marble countertops and high-end BlueStar appliances. There are also two bedrooms with their own bathrooms — plus laundry, powder and mud rooms.
The most unusual part of the home’s interior may be the second-story-wing master bathroom, an open space where the floor, made from marble imported from Turkey, performs an unusual task.
“The ceiling has two large shower heads that are embedded … they don’t project down at all,” said Manhattan architect Audrey Matlock, who designed the Bar House and worked with Hamptons-based Lettieri Construction to build the 2016 home. “There are no shower walls.”
Instead of grout between the tiles, water drains into a pan underneath the floor of the room, which measures about 15 by 20 feet, she said. “You just stand in the room and take a shower,” as the bather peers out upon nature, said Matlock.
The Bar House incorporates the outdoors with the house, said Tenenbaum. “Although it’s modern, from every angle, from every room, you can see all of this nature,” he said.
Annual property taxes are $35,042.
In the runup to the deal, Tenenbaum said he brought in the buyer to watch the sun go down.
“He stayed for two hours because we watched the sunset on the property,” Tenenbaum said. “It was just kind of breathtaking.”
Intermittent between the windows are zinc panels that on the outside function as design elements in the exterior while providing privacy — and on the inside deliver built-in gallery space for displaying large-scale art, Matlock said. “The idea was that a dozen large paintings are floating between glimpses of the forest,” she said.
The property also comes with a sunken tennis court, geothermal heating and cooling, an attached studio and a two-car garage, according to the listing. It is protected by a chain-link fence painted black where native plants grow into the structure so that it disappears, said Matlock.
The design, she said, took about 1½ to two years, and the construction about four.
Northwest Woods is the area north of East Hampton Village on the west side of Three-Mile Harbor, said Tenenbaum.
The sellers, who are New Yorkers, sold because they are moving out west for work, said Matlock. She said she is “crushed” that the home was sold because it “was made for them, and they were so happy there.”
“We, as architects, also get close to the things that we make, you know, and sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh no, no, it’s now going to someone else,’” she said.
Susan Ryan of Compass listed the house in June for $18.5 million.
“This is the first inland property in most of the Hamptons that I can think of that is selling at this price point,” she said.
Tenenbaum agreed, saying, “There’s nothing up in the Northwest Woods that sold at this number.”
Ryan described the Bar House as a one-of-a-kind dwelling with unparalleled privacy that will likely drive prices higher in East Hampton’s woodsy section of town, which is known for its large lots of land.
“Whenever you have something that’s unique that transfers at a high price point, I think people pay attention, right?” she said. “So, I think people will look to this area a bit more.”