CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/13/2026

'Fire Island Modernist'—architectural goldmine and a portal to a lost generation

Out now in an expanded edition, Christopher Rawlins’ perennial summertime best-seller, Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction is, technically, a serious, scholarly architecture book on one of the great overlooked designers of the twentieth century. It’s also a sexy and expansive cultural history of the narrow but mighty barrier island that has become forever known as a joyful, permissive summer paradise for queer New Yorkers of every stripe. “In rediscovering Gifford’s architecture, I also found a portal to a lost generation,” Rawlings writes, “truncated by AIDS and winnowed by the passage of time, but still resonant with artistic and cultural significance.” Pictured here, Water Games (1937) by Herbert List.