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Connections: Quarter-Million Listing

The two-story house is on a wooded lot of about an acre, and they bought it for $270,000
By
Helen S. Rattray

A recently married couple I know moved from their apartment in Queens into their first house last week, and what a house it is!

Just shy of 3,000 square feet, not counting its ample decks, the two-story house is on a wooded lot of about an acre, and they bought it for $270,000. The property is a good 45 minutes west of Bridgehampton, off the William Floyd Parkway in Shirley.

Take a look at the classifieds in today’s Star or go to one of the real estate websites to see if you can find anything — even a tiny vacant lot — at that price here.

Their house lot is unusual in being quite narrow but very long. Whoever developed the area managed to place the footprints of neighboring houses at varying depths from the road so they do not intrude on each other. In addition, the neighborhood is dotted with many tall, healthy trees. And, oh yes, the land across the road is a county park.  

The house has three good-sized bedrooms, a Jacuzzi in one of the two main bathrooms, a large open loft with several skylights, and a basement where a former owner was able to create an apartment with a separate entrance — kitchen, bath, bedroom, and living room — while leaving plenty of space for utilities and storage. If it sounds like a bargain, you better believe it.

The house was built, solidly, in the late 1990s and has built-in air-conditioning and a vacuuming system, which are in good condition. Its style is unique, I think, but hard to categorize. 

The exterior, perhaps influenced by Egyptian architecture, rises to a central peak, but some of the walls, inside and out, are curvilinear. An alcove off the living room, for example, ends in a rectangular space at one side while the other side, following a sidewall, is curved. Two somewhat mysterious hollowed-out spaces at eye level on either side of the living room doorway to the bedroom wing are apparently intended to display artwork. My young friends haven’t figured out yet what to put in them, although otherwise they are already comfortably at home.

And there is more. The former owner, a widow in her 70s, left behind a still-registered 20-foot runabout with a 40-horsepower outboard at no extra cost.

Shirley is one of the hamlets in Brookhaven Town, near Great South Bay and its tributaries. It is about 60 miles from Manhattan and only a 20-minute drive to the Tanger Mall in Riverhead. A search for information on the internet turned up a description of the community as working class; I guess that is pretty accurate. And along with Riverhead and the East End towns, it is in the First Congressional District, so we vote together.

A map shows Shirley as just west of the Moriches, which are sometimes considered steppingstones to the Hamptons. This geography underscores the fact that the South Fork and Shirley are quite near each other — though, at least in terms of real estate, very far apart. 

 

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