The jewelry designer Brent Neale Winston remembers the first time she paid a visit to Hay Fever, a stately three-story house in Locust Valley, New York. Oversize antique hinges adorned the front door to the property, which dates to 1668. Inside, the palette skewed adventurous, as envisioned by its previous owner, the interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber. She was smitten. "Anything with beautiful hardware, anything that uses color in an interesting way, whether it be a box or a bowl or a glass, I'm always drawn to that," Winston says.
It was the summer of 2019, and the home was on the market, but the designer and her husband, Michael Winston, who works in real estate investment, were not ready to commit to a weekend retreat for their young family. "He's a city mouse," she says of his early hesitation. Months later, as the pandemic upended the normal order of things, the Long Island hideaway-set on two verdant acres improbably nestled in the center of town-floated back to mind. She and her husband were also drawn to the property's irresistible moniker, Hay Fever, named by earlier owners, the Hay family, after a Noël Coward play.
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