Perched within a quiet beach community in Montauk, New York, Hither Hills was designed as a weekend escape that feels deeply tied to its surroundings. Created by Bates Masi + Architects, the home sits on a steep, challenging site where flat ground is scarce and traditional beach house layouts simply would not work. The house is nested into the hillside, allowing the landscape to shape how the home is experienced.
From the outside, the house immediately stands out for its rich, weathered timber exterior. Naturally aged horizontal mahogany decking stretches across roofs, walls, floors, and ceilings, forming a continuous skin that wraps the entire structure. The wood is set between locally sourced bluestone retaining walls that step through the site, echoing the natural slope of the land and anchoring the home into the hillside. These stone walls do more than support the structure, they help define both interior and exterior living spaces while reinforcing the home’s connection to the earth beneath it.
Inside, the influence of nature becomes even more apparent. Beneath an oversized skylight, oak louvers hang on canvas hinges, free to sway gently as ocean breezes move through the house. As they shift, they cast ever changing patterns of light across the interior, offering shade and cooling much like the canopy of a tree. The effect is subtle but constant, turning sunlight, air, and movement into part of the home’s daily rhythm.
One of the home’s most striking features is a large retracting glass wall that dissolves the boundary between indoors and out. When opened, it lifts the main living spaces above neighboring rooftops and draws in ocean views, fresh air, and sunlight. This upside down arrangement places the primary living areas higher on the site, making the most of the landscape while maintaining privacy and uninterrupted views toward the shoreline.
The interior flows directly onto a deck that steps down through the site, mirroring the home’s terraced structure. From here, the path continues toward a swimming pool positioned on the only naturally level patch of land at the top of the hill, before reaching a grassy lawn below. Movement through the house and landscape feels gradual and intentional, guided by both interior and exterior circulation paths sheltered beneath cantilevers and roof projections.
Softening the strong presence of wood and stone, lightweight curtains line the home’s openings. They respond to shifts in light and air, gently moving throughout the day and adding a delicate layer to the otherwise robust exterior. Like the louvers and timber surfaces, they make the invisible qualities of the environment visible, turning wind, light, and atmosphere into part of the design itself.
By embedding the house into its terrain and allowing its materials to age, move, and respond to nature, Hither Hills provides a sensory space where architecture and landscape work together.