“It is a house filled with the young, with cousins and friends, an every-one-helps-everyone house,” said Mrs. Cushing, “but somehow it never looks too stuffed.” Alexandra Cushing, above left, amateur photographer and a graduate architecture student at the University of Virginia, spends weekends whenever possible in Southampton. The living room, rimmed with Howard G. Cushing paintings, “is a special treat in late autumn when there is time for fireside talk.” Bridge is a favorite game here, “though none of us is that great at it,” said Mrs. Cushing, right. “Sometimes we switch to backgammon.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, November 1, 1972
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, November 1, 1972
Wearing an orange Jax T-shirt, Justine Cushing, left, against the spiral staircase—“difficult with luggage but fun to look at”—leading up to six bedrooms and six baths. Handmades for upholstering and table: above, left, quilt-covered wicker for a living-room corner; above, center, patchwork tablecloth, sharp blues, keyed to a Cushing painting in the room’s dining corner; above, right, Afghan bedspreads and Porthault flowers for a bedroom.
“The house is easy to fix up and restful and, surprisingly, all that I’d hoped it would be. Certainly not grand but right for the way we choose to live.” The swimming pool, right, so close to the house was a debating point. “As it turned out,” Mrs. Cushing said, “it’s a gathering place, like the family porch all houses had years ago.”
In summer, picnic lunches happen around the Cushing swimming pool. Alexandra, above right, is only one member of the family who swims before breakfast and “always again, before dinner.” While most meals are do-it-together ventures, occasional special parties mean as many as twenty for dinner.
