In July 2026, after a five-year legal battle, Norman Jaffe’s celebrated Bliss House in Southampton was reduced to rubble. It is a fate that could easily have befallen any of the Jaffe houses featured in Modernism by the Sea, a new book by designer Timothy Godbold and photographer Jack Lovel on Long Island’s boldest midcentury houses, including work by Harry Bates, Andrew Geller, Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier.
In an era when success was measured in light and proportion, not square footage, these architects built houses that were less monument than experience, dissolving into the landscapes around them.
Some of these houses have survived, often against the odds, saved by owners who see themselves as stewards rather than renovators. Godbold and Lovel share the stories behind the houses and the people fighting to keep them standing at a moment when even celebrated Modernist landmarks are not safe from demolition.
Timothy Godbold is an interior designer and founder of the nonprofit Hamptons 20th Century Modern. timothygodbold.com @timothy_godbold hamptons20centurymodern.org @hamptons20centurymodern
Jack Lovel is a Melbourne-based architectural photographer whose work has appeared in Wallpaper*, Dwell, Dezeen, and Monocle, with projects spanning Australia, the United States, and Mexico. jacklovel.com Instagram: @jack.lovel
Both grew up in Perth, Australia, and met at Modernism Week in 2023, when the idea of publishing this book first took hold.
Modernism by the Sea, by Timothy Godbold and Jack Lovel, with a foreword by Paul Goldberger, will be published by Rizzoli in March 2027.
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