Tasteful Friends: Your thoughts on the former waterfront home of theater critic Walter Kerr?

Do theatre critics make that much money??

Loved the movie and this house is every bit as overwhelming as the house in the movie

Only at the end do you see the road between the house and the sea. No thanks!

I kind of like it. It looks like the house in Knives Out.

No, R1, but the authors of bestsellers do. I didn't like the movie but Jean Kerr's book is hilarious.

Back when the Kerrs bought that house, real estate prices were not as outrageous as they are today.

It's sort of weird how it looks like the road goes all around the property but the neighbors next door have land that goes all the way to the water.

Tudor or Tudor Revival, but not Spanish-Tudor - that's two things that don't make a style.

There are some wonderful, odd things: the fanciful exterior architecture, the central courtyard, and the two grand rooms on either side of that oddball entry hall. The elaborate rooms were fitted out with the Gothic salvage of Vanderbilt and other area mansions by an architect who converted the carriage house into his residence in 1923. This was the carriage house for the Crocker Estate (now the Larchmont Shore Club, I think - there were several big Crocker houses in the area, one the subject of a previous Tasteful friends... post (link).

I would have preferred it when the Kerrs had it I'm sure. It was sold around 2001 and the new owner gut-renovated many rooms to look like a marriage between a Property Brothers HGTV renovation and the common spaces of a Palm Beach condo building (with a bit of Chip & Johanna Gaines barn door chic in Photo 9). Why take a house with a unique architecture and plan and erase so much of the character with wall to wall carpeting, cheap mouldings and millwork, gypsum wallboard, and big box home center quality fittings?

i' am sucker for an old tudor and the setting i superb and the interior is quite nice

R7 Yes, the Please Don't Eat the Daisies house doesn't have beach access. The beach in front is called Dog Beach and is, obviously, a very popular dog run. Despite the road being right there, the house isn't as exposed to it as the overhead picture suggests.

Looks cheap inside. Could be a condo.

Gorgeous - very livable and comfortable, which you often don't get with larger homes. Typically the owners want to make them look like some sort of upper class manor home and it doesn't fit.

It doesn't look cheap - it's just staging furniture, which can lack a bit of personality. But look at the unique rooms, paneling, views, etc. It's amazing.

I love it. Almost all of it. I don't mind that there isn't a private beach. It's Larchmont, it's not like there's going to be that much traffic. I'd prefer to see some life from the windows. It's nice to see people using the beach.

My memoir should be titled "Please Dont Date the Easies"!

The heavy beam over the bed is a HUGE no no. Feng shui disaster.

Down spots everywhere, dozens and dozens of them. Horrific!

And what are all the other white discs in the ceilings?

I like most of this house but for crying out loud these people seem to hate a restful bare ceiling.

What the hell is Spanish Tudor style?

I like the interiors and the gardens. The outside of the house is ugly.

My lord, the views.

How the hell am I supposed to watch Ashlee and Aydan if I don't have an open floor plan. Where is the room so the guests can gather in the kitchen? We love to entertain, so this will NOT work.

Westchester is so insanely overpriced - and talk about insane real estate taxes. There is a reason Westchester is a buyers market since the 2017 tax change that prevents RE tax write offs. And all I can think when I see the water is what a disaster in a storm in a world of climate change. Nice enough - but I would take CT or PA.

I wonder who the neighbors are just to the right in OP's photo, who ever it is they are so powerful Google street view obscures photos of their home. CIA, Maifa not sure I would want them as neighbors.

Perfect if I can restore some of the rooms. I hate the modernization of old homes

I love the views. The windows are fabulous. The outside of the home is hideous

It didn't do anything for me. Too much of a mix of different styles for my taste. And the taxes are insane, nearly $100K per year??

There's a good shot of the next-door (Google-blurred) house about three quarters of the way through the photo galleryat OP's link. It's a huge Spanish Revival place with an immaculate lawn.

Probably a public figure or a politico's house, my guess.

I got curious -- here's what I found about the residents of the house next door (2 Beach Avenue). Not famous, anyway.

Amazing - when you look up the professions of people on that street, like 90% work for hedge funds. Hedge funds are funneling all of the money in the world into the hands of a few people.

[quote]And what are all the other white discs in the ceilings?

r14 The white discs that aren't lights or smoke detectors are AC, a high-velocity ducted mini-split system. It's done in historic houses because the little duct tubes can be fished through the walls and ceilings instead of having to rip up plaster/woodwork. And normal ducts take up a lot of space, this system fits within existing walls.

They probably bought it with what Jean made on the movie rights MGM paid for her book. Remember she also wrote one of Broadway's longest running comedies Mary Mary which Warners probably paid a lot of money for to turn into the most stage bound movie you'll ever see.

Jean was the bread winner in the family. Walter was a hack and his theater criticism is shit. Oscar Hammerstein has no theater named after him on Broadway yet Kerr does! Unbelievable.

I read a lot of Jean Kerr's books and plays back in the day, she was hilarious! Yes, she her POV was very housewifey, but funny is funny. My favorite was her essay about how she took up writing because that was the only way she could think of to sleep late on a regular basis.

As for the house, I'd kill for it! So what if it's on the wrong coast and has a public road outside, I'd move all my friends and relatives there and have plenty of room for them! And when we got there we could devote the next ten years to finding ways to de-modernize the house, making the kitchen look old-fashioned and inconvenient without actually making it inconvenient, stripping the paint out of the bedroom ceilings, finding 16th century hardwood furniture, encouraging bats to move into the belfry, getting the carillon working, etc. Because one of the reasons the Kerrs bought the house was that it had a carillon that played every day at noon.

Didn't Joan Rivers grow up in Larchmont?

there's no house in that house.

some beds and a bunch of lounging rooms, but no house.

something about all of the windows looks fake.

there's only one room that belongs in a house, and it looks like the most untouched room.

should be redone a la Tim Burton's nightmarescapes. it could only improve the thing.

Jean Kerr was no Shirley Jackson (who also witty and smart books about family life, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, as well as her superb horror fiction. The Kerr's were middle-brow suburban Catholucs, with all the attendant values and prejudices of that population.

The Kerrs bought the house before Jean had a hit book or play. At the time they bought it, one side of the quadrangle had burned to the ground in a fire, and the rest of the house was in poor condition, so it was going cheap. The original builder of the house was a world traveler and collector, and he did his house in a mash-mash of styles to reflect all the places he had been. Moorish tiles mixed with Delft and gothic columns. The ceiling in the formal living room came from the Vanderbilt estate and had the family's coat of arms in each section. I got to see the house right after Jean died, and it was quite different from what you see today. There have been several intervening owners, so little to nothing in the present day house reflects on the Kerrs' taste. The price tag on the house isn't bad -but the taxes ($85k) are outrageous. But what a view!!!

I'm with R8 and R20, the interior should have been left alone, it has been "upgraded" badly. I like the exterior. The staged furniture is crap, I'd replace it with period furniture and try to bring the room back to original and get rid of the tacky modern light fittings

The staged rooms look bland af and the not staged rooms look like an Ivy League school, not a house. And like all of Southern Westchester is very overpriced.

What did they do to the windows? And why is everything white?

A bit much.

Jean was big.

Before the musical "Goldilocks" (book and lyrics by the Kerrs; directed by Walter) opened, Elaine Stritch, who was starring with Don Ameche, told a columnist, "If this isn't a hit, I'll take in washing", which prompted Jean, already tired of Stritch's demands, to write, "I'll send her the first load".

Jean was very, very witty. Please Don't Eat the Daisies is her only book available in digital format. It's a classic. BTW, it's a collection of humorous essays, not a novel with a story line. You can usually find her stuff used online, and I highly recommend Penny Candy, The Snake Has All the Lines, and How I Got to Be Perfect.