Norman Jaffe

Last weekend, I took a bizarre little road trip with a friend who is looking for a place to rent in Montauk (Hamptons, NY), for the summer. It was pretty desolate this time of year, but peaceful. Ronnie, my friend, is very familiar with the area and pointed out several architectural phenoms in the area. One in particular that caught my eye was the Krieger House, designed by Norman Jaffe.

It made me do a little research and I was continually impressed.

(From www.parishart.org) Norman Jaffe, who studied architecture at UC Berkeley in California, built over 600 projects during his thirty-five year career. He received numerable architecture awards and also participated in national and international exhibitions at leading institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. And it was on Eastern Long Island that Jaffe found his niche to create the ultimate vacation homes and explore his love of light and form.

Norman Jaffe’s first visit to Eastern Long Island was in the 1960s. Struck by the lowness of the landscape and the mysterious exchange between the sea and sky, he returned frequently and in 1973 decided to move to Bridgehampton on a permanent basis to establish an architectural practice. Perhaps best remembered for his strikingly sculptural beach houses on the East End, Jaffe, during a 26-year period of practice in the Hamptons—from 1967 until his drowning death in 1993— designed more than 50 houses in the region, ranging from small weekend hideaways to large summer estates straddling the ocean dunes. His portfolio of local work includes a golf club, a synagogue, and a restaurant, in addition to numerous houses.

Jaffe always found inspiration in a wide range of sources, but for his 1985 project the Gates of the Grove for The Jewish Center of the Hamptons, East Hampton, he had a myriad of possibilities from which to draw. There had never been a consistent style of synagogue architecture, so he drew from an array of influences ranging from Eastern European shtetls to New England barns. Alastair Gordon notes that Jaffe wanted to create “a sense of space that was modern and steeped in religious allegory.” The finished sanctuary, which exhibits an exterior form reminiscent of the old wooden synagogues of Eastern Europe is decidedly contemporary with large bands of skylights allowing natural light to bathe the congregants and an interior rich with finished light woods and floors and dadoes made of dolomite limestone. Gates of the Grove marked a high point in Jaffe’s career and brought the architect a new level of respect among his colleagues and the general public.

A full-color 240 page catalogue to be co-published by The Parrish Art Museum and The Monacelli Press will complement the exhibition and provide audiences with a unique and insightful guide into the artist’s life and work. Romantic Modernist: The Life and Work of Norman Jaffe, Architect is the first book to explore Jaffe’s body of work and the inner struggle that shaped his life. Through interviews with Jaffe’s closest friends and associates, Alastair Gordon traces Jaffe’s career from his early years on the West Coast through his celebrated life in New York. The catalogue will be available in The Parrish Art Museum shop at a cost of $35(softcover) and $50 (hardcover).