When Julie Frist was around 12 or 13, her father would take her for driving lessons on a narrow strip of land—barely wider than a football field in some spots—that divided the calm waters of Shinnecock Bay from the crashing waves of the Atlantic. The quiet, partly unpaved road wound between dunes and marsh, lined with scraggly pines bent by the wind. Her father would sit her on his lap and let her steer their old station wagon, pebbles kicking up through the rusted floor. “Dad was like a secret race car driver,” Julie recalls with a laugh.

Those carefree days are long gone. The once-empty shoreline is now dotted with houses, and the roads hum with steady Southampton traffic. When Julie greets me at her door in a flowing blue caftan, she’s decades removed from those childhood drives but still moves with an easy grace. She tosses me a floppy straw hat as we step into the blazing sun, her gentle German shepherd, Athena, circling her feet.

Julie grew up in Washington, DC, before her mother moved the family to New York City and later Connecticut. But summers were always spent in Southampton, where her family had rented or owned homes since the late 1960s. “There were no cell phones back then,” she says. “You’d leave the house at 8 a.m., bike to the tennis club, take swim lessons—then the parents would grill in the backyard, friends would drop by, and the next day, you’d do it all over again.” With frequent school changes, her summer friendships became some of her closest.

After a career in finance, Julie met her husband, Tommy Frist III, at Harvard during grad school. They settled in Nashville—Tommy’s hometown—where they raised their three now-grown children. But Long Island remained a constant. Early in their relationship, they started visiting, eventually buying an old carriage house. They weren’t planning to move again until a unique property caught their eye: a weathered Le Corbusier-style white box, battered by storms and ocean winds, sitting on four overgrown acres with nothing but dunes between it and the sea. The house itself was beyond saving—”The smell hit you the second you walked in,” Julie says. “Humidity, mice, all trapped in this hot box.” But the land held magic. At night, she explains, you get two contrasting views: the bay, with its sunsets and twinkling lights, and the ocean, vast and dark unless lit by the moon.

Building a new house here was ambitious, but the vision was simple—to create something that felt like it had always belonged. “I wanted to honor the homes I loved growing up in,” Julie says. They enlisted architect Gil Schafer, interior designer David Netto (both of whom had worked on their 1915 Charles Platt house in Nashville), and landscape designer Miranda Brooks. The team was more than just collaborators—they were old friends. Netto first met Julie in 1985, in an elevator at a friend’s apartment. “There’s a photo of us clowning around that night,” he recalls. “I was wearing eyeliner, trying to sneak into Area later, and she was this preppy, gorgeous girl from Greenwich. We clicked instantly.” Schafer and Tommy went back decades too, with Schafer having worked on Tommy’s parents’ house early in his career.

Still, the family didn’t want a house steeped in nostalgia. They agreed it should—The design blends the relaxed Shingle style popular in the Hamptons during the 1920s and 1930s with the clean lines of Colonial Revival—what Schafer describes as “life on the beach, but a little bit formal.” But the process wasn’t without debate—their discussions often felt like a graduate seminar on architectural history. “My role was to bring classic structure,” Schafer explains, “and David helped loosen things up.” Schafer lost an argument over the front windows’ proportions, while Netto couldn’t convince him to curve the house around the driveway—a 1920s trick to break up the view.

Though the empty lot seemed full of possibilities, constraints quickly emerged. Protected wetlands left less than an acre for building. FEMA flood rules required raising the house, while local height restrictions capped how tall it could be. To avoid a steep staircase at the entrance, the land was gently sloped.

The bay offers sunsets, twinkling lights, and a hint of horizon, unlike the ocean, which—without moonlight—is just darkness.

Landscape designer Brooks tackled the site’s challenges: salty winds and hungry deer. “Only the hardiest native plants would survive,” she says, “so I focused on materials and creating small outdoor spaces where you can settle in and follow the sun.” The perimeter features viburnum, privet, pines, and red cedar, with espaliered plane trees shielding the garage and pleached shrubs framing the pool. Between the living room and pool pavilion lies an “orchard”—a sheltered courtyard.

The young garden is still finding its footing. Beach grass dots the dunes, and Brooks admits some plants may need replacing over the next few years. “Eventually, only the strongest will remain,” she says. Yet there’s a balance of tradition and surprise—hydrangeas, usually a Long Island staple, are potted in weathered terra-cotta, their blooms white instead of the typical blue. The favorite spot? “Julie’s Garden,” a pergola-shaded nook outside the primary bedroom, bursting with sun-loving perennials like yarrow and echinacea—a pollinator’s paradise.

Inside, the house tells its own story. For the living room, Netto commissioned a travertine mantel (not period-correct limestone) to look as if it had “been underwater for 300 years.” In Tommy’s bathroom, planks mimic driftwood salvaged from shipwrecks—a nod to local history. “That’s how houses were built here for centuries,” Netto says, insisting the contractor avoid too-perfect placement.

Such creative risks, Netto notes, demand trust—a willingness to embrace the unexpected.Transform a vision into something magical. Widen a window to frame the view, paint a room in deep, glossy hues to bring it to life, or turn a sandy patch into a garden for morning coffee—watch as a hill rises from once-flat ground.

“You can’t just persuade people,” Netto explains. “You have to earn their trust. Our role is to give them something they never knew they desired.”

Styling: Hair by Simona Ciorobara; Makeup by Kally Sitaras.