A House Made Up of Four Hexagons

The great room in this 1968 home takes up most of a hexagonal wing. The high clerestory windows afford privacy and a chance to display art, and they’re typical of other Marcel Robins homes. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The developer Marcel Robins was best known for his long-running collaboration with the architect Harry Wenning. They spent the mid-1960s building Robinwood, a unique Westchester sprawl of warm, barn-inspired post-and-beam homes that was named to the National Registry. Then there’s 57 Holly Place, which may be Robins’s strangest home.

Built ten minutes away in Briarcliff in 1968, the six-bedroom house has the duo’s trademark wood and glass, open floor plan, and clerestory windows. But unlike those other homes, 57 is arranged in a series of four hexagons. This was at the request of the owner, whose family would prefer to remain private, and who has spent 54 years filling the odd angles of their odd honeycomb-shaped house.

One enters through the smallest honeycomb — a hexagon with travertine floors and a high, hexagonal cedar ceiling. Hook a right and you’ll find yourself in the next hexagon, built as an entertainment wing. It’s been divvied up like a pizza cut six ways. Three slices make up a great room with a dining and living area whose high windows look up into the trees out front and whose wood-lined ceiling features a dramatic hexagonal skylight. A fourth triangle is the home office, paneled in honey-colored wood. And a fifth triangle is the family room, a hangout space with a fireplace and sliding glass doors that give way to the yard, where a concrete and brick patio is paved in — you guessed it — hexagons, which lead to a pool. The sixth triangle of this entertainment wing is the kitchen. Walk through it, and you reach another hexagon devoted to the more utilitarian functions of the home: a two-car garage, laundry room, pantry, rec room, and guest room. If you enter the home and head the other way, you’ll find yourself in a hexagon of bedrooms.

The home also has 16 closets and, thanks to the hexagonal shape, they are mostly deep and oddly shaped. “Some of those closets are delicious,” says agent Nancy Beard, who has the listing with agent Sharon Bodnar Briskman. “Like Narnia.”

The original homeowner recently passed away, and it’s the first time the home has ever been on the market. (Though it’s been visible to the public before — in was used as Josh Brolin’s home in the 2007 Ridley Scott film American Gangster.)

As Briskman and Beard have shown the place, they say they’ve noticed a very specific perk of its bizarre layout. They can take separate clients into separate wings and demonstrate how their voices don’t carry over — a major selling point today, Briskman says. “In COVID, everybody was desperate for office space. ‘Where will be my office? Where will I Zoom from?’ And this affords all of that,” she says. “I think that’s very unusual in a home to have no sense of what other people are up to. What worked in 1968 really is working in today’s post-COVID market, too.”

The home is set back on a cul-de-sac that sees little street traffic but happens to be in an accessible area — minutes from the local train at Scarborough, and less than 15 minutes to the express stop at Tarrytown. Other homes on the block are from the same era. 87 Holly Place, which went up in 1969, was also built by Robins. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The entryway is the home’s smallest hexagon, made grand with high ceilings lined in cedar planks and travertine floors. It had a cameo in the 2007 Ridley Scott film American Gangster, playing the home of a dirty cop assumed to have bought it with his ill-gotten cash. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

To the right of the entryway, the great room is built for a family to lounge in. The floor is tiled in travertine and cross-sections of wood. Robins was known for leaving natural materials exposed. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The curtains by the dining nook are original to the home. An interested buyer can make an offer on any of the furniture, though the family has claimed a few pieces. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The clerestory windows are a Robins signature, which also appear in the houses he built with architect Harry Wenning that make up the neighborhood Robinwood. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The skylight in the great room. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The great room defines a wing of the house, devoted to family activities. Doors lead to a study and a family room. Past them, sliding glass doors lead to a pool outside. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The study, with built-in shelves and wood paneling. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

Six rooms across the one-story home have doors that open into the yard, a kind of open indoor-outdoor living that was ahead of its time in 1968. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The family room has a working stone fireplace and connects to the patio outside — perfect for barbecues or big parties that spill outside. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

In the entertainment wing, a kitchen has lots of room and retro wallpaper. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

Off the entryway, a hall leads to another hexagonal wing. The doors lead to five bedrooms. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The primary bedroom with hanging lights that are likely original to the home. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

Each bedroom has a unique shape with closets and bathrooms tucked into the odd angles. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

A bedroom. Note the custom curtains, patterned to match the wallpaper. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The current owner has been using one of the bedrooms as a home office. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

“All of the wallpaper in the bathrooms are so quintessentially mid-century modern. It’s just like a time capsule in that way,” says Sharon Bodnar Briskman, who has the listing with Nancy Beard. “They’re perfect.” Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

57 Holly Place sits on one acre of land, designed by landscape architect Armand Benedek. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The back patio carries the hexagon theme outdoors. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

The pool, strangely, isn’t hexagonal. “It’s kind of a free form,” says Beard. Photo: Modern Angles / Courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence