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(Photo credit: Saunders & Associates)

This traditional-styled Shelter Island home packs in a lot of must-haves: light-filled spacious rooms for family gatherings and entertaining, windows galore, a cook’s kitchen, wood-burning fireplaces and a front porch for rocking chairs. It also includes some pretty good “nice-to-haves”: 128 feet of waterfront, views of Gardiners Bay and the Long Beach Bar “Bug” Lighthouse and proximity to the Gardiners Bay Country Club and Hay Beach Point.

Just 100 feet from the water, the house is surrounded by slender scrub oaks, offering near-complete privacy from the neighbors and unobstructed views onto the water. 

“It has glorious sunrise views, you look directly onto the lighthouse and you have your own beach, so it’s very private in its own way,” says Penelope Moore, who is the listing agent for the property at Saunders & Associates. She notes that Hay Beach, developed in the 1970s as one-acre lots, was planned “so there would be distance between you and your neighbors.” 

Built in 2004, the 5,122-square-foot house has three generous bedrooms ranging from 500 to 740 square feet and four and a half bathrooms on the upper floors. A renovation on the lower-level ground floor adds another 2,700 square feet, which includes a 922-square-foot media room and storage of nearly equal size, an additional 286-square-foot bedroom and full bathroom, windowed home office and a bonus room nearly the size of the bedroom.

“Everything about this house is massive,” Moore says. The lower level, she adds, “almost feels like a different place your family can go and hang out in and you never have to see them.” 

Indeed, the layout of the entire house offers numerous opportunities for people to have their own space. On the first floor, the living room is 634 square feet but seems larger, thanks to the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors that create the illusion of a living space extending to the outside. (The 16 x 32 gunite pool with its hardwood decking is directly outside, offering additional entertainment space.) 

Featuring a half-moon lunette window and a wood-burning fireplace, the great room leads into both a smaller family room with no-less-commanding bay views and a 300-square-foot kitchen with beadboard cupboards, granite countertops, KitchenAid appliances and a built-in desk cubby. The dining room is accessed from the hall leading off the grand foyer. 

A long hall traversing the width of the house leads to a master bedroom suite with a wood-burning fireplace and space enough for a sitting area. Off the main room are two walk-in closets on either side of an internal hall that leads to a two-room bathroom suite.

On the second floor, the two large en-suite bedrooms each have their own balcony facing the water. The larger of the two includes a walk-in closet. In between the bedrooms is a 150-square-foot sitting room the current owners use as a library. 

Sitting on nearly an acre with a path leading to the beach from the pool, the home is three miles to the center of town and about three miles to the North Ferry. The neighborhood has attracted the likes of designer Jonathan Adler and his husband, retail creative director and fashion personality Simon Doonan.

Gardiners Bay Drive is the access point to Menhaden Lane, a 35-acre pristine tract of beach and land that hosts indigenous flora and fauna and protected species such as Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus, Red Cedar and other wildflowers, shrubs and grasses. It is a nesting area for the near-threatened  Piping Plover shorebird. (Read here for a history of this micro area.)

In Shelter Island, says Moore, “Everywhere you go, there’s a different complexion and something to appreciate.” 

72 Gardiners Bay Drive lists for $5,990,000 and complete details are found here

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