WELLFLEET - We liked Eleanor Stefani even before we met her. "Check in any time you want," she had told us on the phone when we booked a stay at The Colony. "We're not a commercial place. We don't run by the clock."
When we did arrive shortly after noon on a July day, she was industriously trimming the shrubs in her garden. She took off her work gloves to greet us and talk about her favorite subject: the little cluster of Bauhaus-style summer cottages she has owned since 1963.
"They were built by architects Nathaniel Saltonstall and Oliver Morton starting in 1948," she said as she gestured at the flat-roofed buildings set among pines on the rolling dune landscape. Saltonstall, one of the founders of the Institute of Contemporary Art, and Morton were proponents of then-avant-garde Bauhaus minimalism. The property included a larger gallery building, and the cottages originally housed artists who were invited to exhibit work - and the patrons who were invited to buy it. "It was a social club," Stefani said. "You had to have social and banking references to stay here."
Stefani, who now lives in what was the gallery, defied tradition from the start by opening up the cottages to all interested comers. She has hosted her share of celebrities, including a few movie stars. But she's prouder to have welcomed such intellectuals as novelist Bernard Malamud, journalist and historian William Shirer, and child psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles.
Diana Trilling worked on her memoir here - and was photographed by Richard Avedon. The Colony also attracts architects and designers who want to inhabit and study a Bauhaus space. But Stefani seems to get the biggest kick out of showing more casual guests that you don't need a McCottage to enjoy a stay at the beach.
"We don't use keys," she said, leading us up a short path to 9A, a one-bedroom, one-bath unit with all rooms laid out along a straight line. We entered through a sliding screen door into a small dining room that opened into what Stefani called the bed-sitting room. ("Why do you need separate rooms for activities that you don't do at the same time?") The old-fashioned term conjured up an overstuffed garret in a period British film.
Instead, we found a large square room flooded with light from two walls of windows. Narrow but comfortable beds, which can be made up as two singles or a double, serve as couches during the day. The room was artfully furnished with clean-lined modern pieces, including an Eames table and two chairs and a clever wall-mounted desk. Original artwork hung on the walls and freshly cut flowers filled vases. Concrete floors were cool underfoot and completed the minimalist look. Had the architects also considered how easy it would be to sweep up sand? (The Colony provides daily maid service.)