I LOVE NICE THINGS.

Isabella Geist Southampton White Elephant One of the most famous–or infamous–houses in the Hamptons, the property currently called Elysium has been a lightning rod of controversy for more than three decades. Take a historical property on one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in Southampton, throw in a crooked parvenu with bad taste, add a whiff of financial monkey business, a dollop of tough zoning laws and top it off with a $37 million price tag, and you get the makings for a true real estate disaster like this one. In a part of the world where no one bats an eye at homes that cost upwards of $20 million and excess is a foreign concept, Elysium is a tough sell. Imagine if someone turned a beautiful vintage  Rolls-Royce  into a stretch limousine and painted it hot pink, and you get the idea. Underneath there is a truly fine house–but so much has been done to it that it might be easier to just tear it down and build a new one rather than bother with fixing it. Originally...

For just $15 a day, Suffolk County residents can drive up in an R.V. and stay at the park at the end of Meadow Lane in Southampton, N.Y., where the views of the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Shinnecock Bay on the other are considered to be among the most spectacular on the East palace the likes of which is seldom seen in an area of increasing architectural homogeneity. He has done a gut renovation and then a complete demolition of  the enormous house that once stood there, been through three different architects in the process of building his new one, scoured the Western world for the best monochromatic furnishings money can buy, and even done extensive work to the dunes so that they are exactly to his liking. Mr. Klein is hardly the only famous person to have taken up residence on this narrow band of very expensive land. Neighbors include David and Julia Koch and Aby Rosen and Samantha Boardman, as well as the investor Leon Black and the hotelier Ian Schrager. But it’s Mr. Klein’...