Larchmont house tour features waterfront Tudor

This year, the annual house tour sponsored by the Larchmont Historical Society will feature a spectacular 1925 Tudor that sits on an island in Larchmont Harbor.

The gardens on the estate-like waterfront property were designed by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd, the illustrious landscaping pair who have spent 30 years creating North Hill Garden in Readsboro, Vt. Garden historian Mac Griswold has called the 7-acre North Hill "one of the 10 best private gardens in North America."

 

The Tudor is one of five historic homes in Larchmont and Mamaroneck town that will be open from 1 to 5 p.m. April 26. Four of the homes have never been part of the annual tour, which this year is called "Built to Last: Stories in Stone." Tickets cost $35 for members of the historical society, $40 for nonmembers.

After visiting the homes, tourgoers are invited to attend an art show and reception that will run from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Mamaroneck Artists' Guild at its new home at 126 Larchmont Ave. in Larchmont.

As part of the weekend festivities, Eck and Winterrowd will give a slide-show lecture at 3 p.m. Saturday, April 25, at St. John's Episcopal Church in Larchmont.

Their talk will focus on their most recent book, a highly personal collaboration called "Our Life in Gardens" (Farrar, Straus, 2009). A cocktail reception and book signing will follow.

Their other books include "Living Seasonally" (Henry Holt, 1999) and "A Year at North Hill" (Holt, 1995). Tickets for the lecture cost $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers.

Linda and Spencer Falk bought the grand 1925 Tudor in 1996 and undertook a major renovation in 1999 that would nearly double the original footprint to its current 5,500 square feet.

The house is one of four on the private Cedar Island. It sits on 1.26 acres.

The original part of the house - to the left when you face the front door - has wonderful charm, and the new part was designed and built by Dinyar Wadia of Wadia Associates in New Canaan, Conn., to be a seamless match with the original stone and stucco exterior.

A massive period-appropriate slate roof pulls the whole structure together.

The new house boasts seven bedrooms, eight baths, five chimneys, a sauna, a wine cellar, a billiard room, a breakfast room and a huge kitchen and family room.

Outside, you'll find a private dock, a pair of garages, beautifully planted gardens, a free-form swimming pool and lots of terraces and patios for outdoor living.

Original architectural details include five rounded windows hand-painted with scenic landscapes, copper-clad oriel windows, steeply pitched roofs, brick porthole windows, stained oak paneling with matching beamed ceilings and stained-glass windows.

Like what you see? Make an offer. Linda put the house on the market in February with a list price of $10.5 million.

Seven years ago, the Falks hired Eck and Winterrowd to restore and reinvent the gardens.

"They never drew a design for me," Linda says. "They just said: 'This is what we want to do; this is what we think is right - give us a budget.' "

First, they completely eliminated the front lawn, except for a meandering grass path that runs through the new garden.

"They wanted to create privacy," Linda says. "In season, it's very dense. You really don't see the house or anything else."

The gardens feature many unusual plantings, Linda says. "Joe and Wayne don't do anything anybody else does."

One of the most unusual plantings is a specimen Davidia, the rare handkerchief tree that takes 20 or more years to reach flowering age.

Dozens of old gray apple trees with a wonderful sense of architectural whimsy surround the vegetable garden. Eck and Winterrowd rescued them from an apple orchard that was about to be bulldozed.

"I think the most challenging part was the creation of the vegetable garden, which is not the rectilinear space most vegetable gardens have to be," says Winterrowd, who credits Eck with most of the design work here.

"It is sort of pie-shaped, and so his challenge was to create a sense of order and even formality in that irregular space. To do so he used dwarf box, bluestone paths and those apple trees."

Most summers, the garden is full of Swiss chard, cauliflower, peas, eggplants, peppers, broccoli and many kinds of lettuce and tomatoes.

"We eat out of the garden from June through October," Linda says. "I try to choose vegetables my kids will eat."

Sometimes the chef from Plates comes over to pick a few things for dinner specials for his Larchmont restaurant.

Late April is still very early for most gardens, but tourgoers will certainly get a good sense of the bones of the gardens and the spectacular setting in the harbor, just across from the Larchmont Yacht Club.