geodesic domes

On Long Island’s East End, a Steve Baer–Inspired Dome

Post By: Olivia April 17, 2024 0 Comment(s) buckminster fuller, dome home, domes, geodesic domes, montauk, the east end, the hamptons, the real estate, who’s selling

Photo: EPM Real Estate Photography

By now, Montauk’s identity as a working-class fishing village has, like its beaches, largely eroded, between Surf Lodge and Gurney’s and trailers selling for $3.75 million. But the dome home at 54 East Lake Drive, built by a local handyman in 1976, is a vestige of an earlier era in the town’s history. With shingled sides and extensive interior wood detailing, it’s also a particularly well-preserved example of the DIY building craze that swept the country in the late ’60s and ’70s among hippie and back-to-the-land types. But the house, which just listed with Kevin Iglesias and Sarah Fox from Signature Premier Properties, is asking the very 2024 price of $2.99 million.

The dining area — domes are known for their large, open spaces.
Photo: EPM Real Estate Photography

“He wasn’t a builder, but he had a vision,” says Iglesias of the late owner, Eugene Tallarico, whose son is selling the property. “He always had a liking of the dome shape and he wanted to do something architectural.” It’s one of the few domes on the East End, as far as Iglesias knows, and there is another dome home, an exceptionally large one, on the North Fork. His son Euguene Thomas Tallarico says that his father worked on the home while living in Greenwich Village and working as a purser for TWA. Whenever he had time off, he’d come to Montauk and camp out at the building site. He was an inventive person, according to his son, who installed unusual features in the home like a built-in vacuum system. “It was a unique adventure,” he says. “And I want someone to carry on his inspiration.”

Dome homes, popularized by Steve Baer’s 1968 Dome Cookbook, which detailed how to frame one out yourself with two-by-fours or PVC pipes, were based on Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic-dome design from 1954. (“You don’t need to know much, you just have to go ahead and try it out,” the book advised, although it appears you did need to know some trigonometry.) Part of the beauty of the dome fad was the notion that one need not be a professional, or spend a lot of money, to build a house. (A big focus of the movement was on reusing materials, such as steel from junked cars or bottle caps, as external coverings for the homes, not all of which survived the decades well.) The house at 54 East Lake Drive, however, was clearly built by a skilled craftsperson with an artistic eye. (Tallarico also painted, says Iglesias, and his paintings are still displayed throughout the home.) There are customized wood and stone floors, huge triangular windows that let in copious amounts of light, and cathedral ceilings in addition to three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, and a sprawling, curving kitchen. In all, the house is about 2,000 square feet.

The house isn’t on a huge amount of land, but it isn’t far from the water, and you can see the sound, and Connecticut, from the windows in the aerie at the top, a cupola with 360-degree views, according to Iglesias. It’s also relatively secluded, at the end of a very quiet, dead-end street about a five-minute drive from the village. All of which might help save it from demolition, a fate that’s befallen a number of other unusual, architecturally significant homes in the Hamptons. But given the current Montauk buyers’ market and the limited appeal of dome living — the homes, like octagon houses before them are, though inventive and often beautiful, not to everyone’s tastes — its survival isn’t a given, either. “It would be a shame to tear it down,” says Iglesias. “It’s a unicorn in Montauk. You can’t find another house like it.”