The sunroom’s crosshatched windows overlook an expansive patio, the pool, and the legendary gardens. The 14-room house now includes a dorm-style room on the third floor for young children in the family.
Voracious readers, Quinn and Bradlee spend many hours in both the book-lined living room. Many of the books and most of the wicker furniture were left in the house by Little Edie.
The restored entry foyer retains most of its original paneling; Quinn darkened the floors and stripped and refinished the newel posts to match.
The sunroom is an addition that was not part of the house’s original 1897 design.
A poster from the 1975 Maysles brothers documentary hangs outside a room that Bradlee uses as a study.
The second-floor landing features a Cowtan & Tout striped wallpaper and a poster from the 2009 HBO movie Grey Gardens, which hangs above a trunk once owned by Phelan Beale Jr., Little Edie’s brother.
Little Edie was living in the yellow bedroom when she sold the house in 1979. “It had a mattress on the floor, a hanging lightbulb, and a small chest with a hot plate on it,” says Quinn.
The vine-covered gray-stucco walls give the house and its gardens its name, and is now maintained by Quinn and Amagansett-based garden designer Victoria Fensterer.
A pair of Adirondack chairs sit on the front porch. Quinn, a native of Savannah, painted the ceiling blue, a Southern convention that’s said to ward off everything from wasps to evil spirits.
Even Spot Beale has his own piece of the property.
A child’s cottage is roofed in traditional English thatch.
An outbuilding is swathed in sweet autumn clematis.