CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/24/2025

Provincetown Bookshop presents Christopher Rawlins with Peter McMahon on 'Fire Island Modernist'

Sunday August 24, from 4–5 PM, Provincetown Bookshop presents Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction, Expanded Edition author Christopher Rawlins in conversation with Cape Cod Modern: Mid-Century Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape author and founder of the Cape Cod Historic House Trust, Peter McMahon.

Featuring new houses, many additional photographs and a new afterword, Fire Island Modernist offers a fascinating look at the history and culture of this "gay paradise" through the life and work of Horace Gifford.

As the 1960s became the "Sixties," architect Horace Gifford executed a remarkable series of beach houses that transformed the terrain and culture of New York’s Fire Island. Growing up on the beaches of Florida, Gifford forged a deep connection with coastal landscapes. Pairing this sensitivity with jazzy improvisations on modernist themes, he perfected a sustainable modernism in cedar and glass that was as attuned to natural landscapes as to our animal natures. Gifford’s serene 1960s pavilions provided refuge from a hostile world, while his exuberant post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS masterpieces orchestrated bacchanals of liberation.

Blending cultural and architectural history, Fire Island Modernist ponders a fascinating era through an overlooked architect whose life, work and colorful milieu trace the operatic arc of a lost generation, and still resonate with artistic and historical import. First published in 2013 and long out of print, this iconic book returns in an expanded edition, including five new featured houses, drawings of previously unseen homes, new photography, updated scholarship and a new afterword by Charles Renfro.

Andrew Geller, Hunt House, Ocean Bay Park, NY, 1958.

This book was published in conjunction with Gordon De Vries Studio.

Purchase the book here.

Provincetown Bookshop
Sunday August 24, 4–5 PM
Christopher Rawlins with Peter McMahon on 'Fire Island Modernist'
229 Commercial St.
Provincetown, MA