Something kept drawing my eye through that particular tangle of holly trees. A meandering wooden bridge, suspended high above a hillside, wove its way to a house seemingly floating in the trees. By night, an attenuated sliver of illuminated glass confirmed that it was inhabited. Other odd and seductive homes invited exploration with the hook of a soaring roofline, a breezeway cut through the middle or a dance of platforms artfully dodging the trees. None looked alike but all seemed to be part of an extended architectural family. I began knocking on doors. “Who designed this place?” “Horace Gifford.” “Who?” I was a student of modernist architects. Why didn’t I know this one? I was exploring Fire Island Pines, one of eighteen coastal communities dotting this narrow spit of land which protects the south shore of Long Island, New York, from the Atlantic Ocean, forming the Great South Bay. Thirty miles long, and barely a quarter of a mile wide, Fire Island rewards the considerable effort of reaching it with car-free paths and expanses of protected dunes between its hamlets.

Horace Gifford was a bit player in the architectural one-upmanship of the nearby Hamptons, but Fire Island — and especially The Pines — is where he quietly honed his craft, shaping the midcentury architecture of the island more than any other individual. In a brief but prolific career, Gifford’s rigorous but informal beach houses transcended an earlier beach shack vernacular while retaining their virtue of simplicity. These homes entice with intimacy rather than ostentation. They are generally modest in size, artfully wedded to their sites and wrought in now-weathered wood and glass. Though critically praised and published during his lifetime, Horace Gifford is now an obscure figure outside of the small coastal communities where he focused his efforts.