Baby boomers cling to their nostalgic past, as a new generation embraces the mid-century modern craze that has taken the nation by storm, unseating shabby chic in favor of sleek design lines in vogue during the post-World War II era. Had we only realized the value of a Southern Shores Flat Top block cottage 30 years ago, a national historic district like the one preserving Old Nags Head may have succeeded, saving a continuous row of vernacular oceanfront summer homes built on Ocean Boulevard from 1947 until the middle 1960s.

The Flat Top speaks to today’s aesthetic sensibilities. They are über green, organic block cottages made from blocks cast from beach sand. With very little lumber, they take their form from post-World War II architectural styles, like the Prairie Style minted by Frank Lloyd Wright and the International Style of Bauhaus architects Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

The Southern Shores Flat Top transports us back in time to the days of its origin. Invented by pioneer builder and real estate developer Frank Stick, trained illustrator and a hopeless conservationist, Stick opened Southern Shores Phase I in 1946, and in 1947 he designed and built his first block cottage on the oceanfront.

The oldest flat tops are over 65 years old but are lovingly preserved and maintained today. Photo by Marie Walker.

Because traditional building materials were restricted for government use, Stick articulated his designs with bulky, 42-pound blocks cast conveniently from sand. In the earliest designs, he experimented with varied roof pitches, some 10 feet high, but most of them leaked so he scrapped that concept and flattened the rooflines. Adding exposed wooden, rudimentary dovetail soffits painted in deeply pigmented jewel tones, the soffits and matching wooden storm shutters helped screen the sun’s intense rays during summer months.

A few quirky nuances surfaced as the designs were refined. Low block walls, sometimes perforated, defined the property lines. Closer to the house were arcaded doorways that led to the oceanfront without having to pass through the cottage. These passageways served the function that would otherwise require an outdoor shed to hide lawn tools and garbage cans. There were garages for protecting automobiles from salty ocean sprays and private apartments for service staff. By eliminating a conventional gable or hipped roof and attic, Stick could build a house in four months’ time and reduce the cost of the house by a third.

From a stand of Atlantic white cedar harvested and milled in Currituck County, local carpenters Charlie Spruill and Arnold Perry finished the interior walls and built kitchen cabinets.

Many flat tops today still sport jewel-tone colors, breezeways, perforated block walls, and lattice work reminiscent of the era when they were built. Photo by Marie Walker.

Anecdotes infer that Flat Top dwellers held a reverence for the cocktail hour. Peter Dunne remembers one custom design of note was created for a Flat Top homeowner who asked it be tall enough for shelving a half-gallon gin bottle. At 62 Ocean Boulevard, his family’s beach cottage was located in the thick of the action. Dunne’s Dune, now listed for sale for $975,000, (at press time) neighbors the lot where Frank Stick built his own home.

From his Tampa, Florida home Dunne reminisced about his father, Finley Peter Dunne.

“He loved fishing and was very good at it. He loved swimming. He loved the whole atmosphere,” Dunne says. His father, once a drama critic for New York World, and his mother, once a writer for Vanity Fair, both read like mad. When Finley Peter Dunne passed away in 1991, there was a shift in family dynamic. Some members wanted to sell but Peter and Faith Dunne and their children held fast.

Shortly thereafter the Dunne Cottage was enrolled in a rental program. Its original boxy floorplan supported three bedrooms and one bath. The only modifications made to the house were made to the annex or the servants’ quarters that adjoined the main house, known among family members as The Block House.

“My biggest memory – I guess I operate a lot on smell – is arriving, driving up, opening the door, you get that wonderful cedar smell. You open the back door you get the ocean smell, and you’re home,” Dunne says. “Then you walk up on the dune and there it is: The Atlantic Ocean is still there. Big surprise.”

He is also fond of the sound of the surf and recalls a time – before he lost his hearing in the Vietnam War – when, with windows open, he fell asleep to the sound of the ocean. “That’s a delicious sound,” Dunne says.  “A lot revolved around the house, the ocean, good food … good wine and conversation and reading. It has a lot of really sensual memories.”

The Dunne Cottage story is now revisited through the pages of its guest book (“What a wonderful time, very rustic, but we love it …”) and a Facebook page dedicated to Southern Shores Historic Flat Top Cottages.

Now that the Dunne family is scattered between Florida and Hawaii, it is less and less appealing for them to vacation on the Outer Banks. The house was listed for sale a few years ago but has enjoyed solid weekly rental bookings through fall of 2014 (proving that not all renters desire McMansions with elevators and double kitchens).

The Facebook group conducted a recent tour of surviving oceanfront Flat Tops, as a benefit for the Outer Banks Community Foundation’s Flat Top Preservation Fund to pay for historically accurate repairs and renovations of its headquarters at 13 Skyline Road. The house, the only protected Flat Top in Southern Shores, may only be used to support the OBCF and its operations or may be reassigned as a base of operations for another 501(c)(3) nonprofit or government entity.

It is believed the cottage was built in 1953 by Frank Stick. In 1975 the property was purchased by anonymous buyers who later donated the house and land to the OBCF.

In accepting the deed, the OBCF agreed to erect an appropriate and permanent memorial plaque on the existing cottage or memorial monument on the property commemorating the life and contribution of Frank Stick to the Town of Southern Shores and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Jim Perry was an OBCF board member when the Flat Top Preservation Fund was established in 2010. “There was some effort to discern a way for the headquarters to carry itself. There was a lot of discussion knowing the effort would be difficult because we were looking for a sustaining fund to carry the overhead for just the building hoping the attraction and fondness for the Flat Tops would result in more money than we were able to secure,” Perry says. “It appears that maybe the affection for the Flat Tops goes only so far, or perhaps our goal was too high, but you have to shoot to get.”

Perry has personally owned a Flat Top cottage at 120 Ocean Boulevard since the 1970s. Sited on the oceanfront, it features modern conveniences amid the rustic grain of authentic knotty pine paneling and cabinets, rattan and wicker furnishings, baseboard heaters and window unit air conditioners. Perry says he has not made any modifications to the cottage since the time of its purchase and he rents it weekly.

“There is one couple that comes to it, and would come to it through the year, including winter — of course it’s not comfortable in the winter — they just enjoy it and it allows pets, which is an attraction to some of the older houses.” Because there were painted cutouts of seagulls placed over the latticework when he bought it, Perry named the cottage Four Gulls. ■

Marimar McNaughton is editorial director of Wrightsville Beach Magazine and managing editor of Lumina News. Her appetite for architecture was inspired by working for Lilias Morrison with Alex Engart, AIA in Sanderling in the 1980s and 1990s. From that seminal introduction, she has come to appreciate the home as a sacred space for the human spirit for rest and recreation.

Author: CoastalLife