You’re sitting pretty in this retreat designed
for an acclaimed writer.
November 2019
By Colin W. Sargent
When Dr. Murray Straus, an internationally respected professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, took a sabbatical in Paris, he and his wife, Dorothy, bought a 42-foot canal boat. What a perfect solution for writing a book“while cruising the canals of France,” Dorothy says.
The two dreamers loved the experience so much they searched for another nautical residence beyond the modernist berm-style home they owned in Durham, New Hampshire. They discovered it in Maine, on Long Sands Beach.
“Nubble View” was a 1930s Dutch Colonial home with dazzling oceanfront views across Long Beach Road. At one time, a tea room operated on the first floor. What Murray and Dorothy found was the kind of romantic place where they roll up the sidewalks along the beach during the winter. What a place for contemplation and inspiration! A true writer’s retreat.
STORM CENTER
The winter storms had enormous breakers that detonated into the sea wall, spectacular with spume and spindrift. Not only could they see Nubble Light to the left, Boon Island Light (the tallest in Maine) was straight out the living room window.
LAND YACHT
Perfect. If only this house were a boat! “We hired Ivan Stanek, originally from Prague, who’d worked extensively on our Durham berm house.” Extreme creativity was a must. “We told him we wanted the feeling of living on a boat. He’d worked on yachts in Florida and understood what we wanted. He delivered.”
The fanciful new interior, with lovely pickled wood, curves, mahogany, portholes, and ladders, looks like a boat and a lighthouse at once.
This 3,526-square-foot year-round getaway has a recently reduced price of $1.495M. It has seven bedrooms, 3.75 baths, six parking spaces, and a huge two-car garage with loft. The front patio is shielded from the breezes by rugosa roses. The estate is actually three unique rental units–always in high demand.
On the top floor, Stanek, who fled to America in the 1980s from Czechoslovakia, has created a most princely pulpit. It’s the author’s equivalent of a flying bridge. A single person (Straus was the author of 15 books, including Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in the American Family and Intimate Violence) ascends a ladder from the living room. Once you’ve settled in to the built-in cushion/nook, you’ve made it to the crow’s nest. You’re surrounded by portholes framing the heaving waves. An ingenious polished wood desk slides out of the wall. The beach, and the world, are at your feet. On your notebook, you type Chapter One.
Taxes for 345 Long Beach Avenue are $11,796.
Dear Colin,
The article is wonderful. You found just the right words to describe our
hideaway by the ocean. Murray would be very pleased. Thank you for
featuring our home this month. It was a pleasure meeting you and your wife.
Dorothy Dunn Straus