Daniel Sachs and Kevin Lindores Reimagine a House on Long Island’s North Shore

Set on three and a half acres of rolling grounds amid the winding lanes and grand estates of Long Island’s North Shore, the rambling six-bedroom house would be a wonderful place to raise a family. Nancy Hoguet fell in love with it, and after purchasing the home in 1990, she and her husband soon added children—first a daughter, then two sons.

As the kids grew up, there were little dogs underfoot, miniature horses in the small barn out back, and, for a brief stint, pet peacocks—acquired impulsively—preening about the yard. “One day they just up and flew away,” Hoguet says.

The tiny horses were even allowed inside the residence on big occasions; on more ordinary days Hoguet would hook them up to a cart (or a sled in winter) for the short trot to school. Her own parents had died when she was young, and she was determined to give her kids the kind of childhood she felt she had missed out on. “It was a real kids’ house,” she says.

But as the younger generation progressed to boarding school, college, and careers and Hoguet’s marriage ended, the house suddenly felt tired, more like a relic than a living, breathing home. Its formality weighed on her currently more upbeat sensibility—“overly preppy” and “way too matchy-matchy” is how she describes its old look. She didn’t know whether to keep the place and pump new life and style into it or to sell and move on, lighter, less encumbered. She wasn’t sure what she envisioned for herself at that stage in her life, but, as always, she tried to remain open to all possibilities.

When her sons were teenagers, she’d gone back to school for a master’s degree in contemporary art from Sotheby’s, often manning the phones during auctions. Earlier in life, after college, she had worked as a journalist for newspapers in Johannesburg and Los Angeles before settling in for an eight-year stint as a field producer for CNN in New York City—that is, until motherhood made traveling too difficult.

Few knew she was a descendant of the Austrian branch of the storied Rothschild family of financiers. Hoguet’s maternal grandparents, Baron and Baroness Alphonse de Rothschild, their two daughters, Gwendoline (Hoguet’s mother) and Bettina, and the wider family had been forced to flee Europe during World War II. Six decades would pass before Hoguet’s aunt, Bettina Looram, who died in 2012, succeeded in getting the Austrian government to return much of the artwork, furniture, and books the Nazis had confiscated from the family.

In 1999, the treasures were put on the block at Christie’s in London, and Hoguet, her two cousins, and Looram all flew in before the sale to look through their ancestors’ trove. Among the items Hoguet kept was an enormous 16th-century horsehead-adorned horn, which now hangs in the house’s central hallway, and a 17th-century Dutch landscape, displayed in the library. “I didn’t pick anything really important,” she says. “Just a few things that spoke to me.” The rest ended up in museums and private collections around the world. Hoguet is now researching a book based on the letters her grandmother Clarice wrote during the war and after, when she settled in New York.

A few years after the sale, as Hoguet’s suburban nest started emptying, she felt the pull of urban life, and in 2005 she moved back to the city. Brooklyn-based designer Daniel Sachs helped her find a pre-war apartment on the Upper East Side. It was a new beginning, and together they created a fresh look that mingled global textiles with contemporary art and quirky antiques. “For Nancy, I don’t think spare and modern is advisable,” Sachs quips.

Soon Sachs and architect Kevin Lindores, his professional and life partner, were drawn into the saga of what to do with Hoguet’s Long Island relic. The process involved making day trips to Montauk and the Hamptons to see what else was on the market. On those long drives, she would weigh the pros and cons and came to realize how nice it was to have a retreat some 20 miles from the city. Plus, it was just a quick skip for her kids and their friends. The decision grew clear. “This is home base,” Hoguet says. “I wanted to keep everyone together.” So she and Sachs began redecorating the residence, not from scratch but one room at a time, methodically considering what to keep, what to refresh, and what to chuck. “We left quite a bit,” he says. “It’s a more casual way to design.”

Eventually they made it through the whole house, bringing in interesting, even funky, textiles, playful kilims, and shocks of contemporary art. A colorful Philip Taaffe hangs above a living room sofa. On the dining room’s newly painted walls, three large Donald Baechler works replaced heavy displays of family china. “It’s a little sexier now,” Hoguet says.

One of the biggest structural changes was to the kitchen, which Lindores doubled in size by combining a warren of little rooms. The result is an inviting eat-in space where everything feels as though it has been there forever, save for some boldly geometric cement floor tiles. Even the front door got a face-lift: Now lacquered a brilliant shade of blue, it beckons with the warmest of welcomes.

It’s clear that Hoguet has reached her intended audience. “I love the house as it is now,” says her daughter, Gwen. “The rooms are still ours, but they’re more tailored to adult lives. A lot of my friends’ parents have moved away, but we’re all incredibly happy she kept the place.”