Advance Publications chairman S.I. Newhouse—Conde Nast's big honcho—and his wife live on three adjacent lots in Bellport, Long Island, on South Howell's Point Road. The lawn proper is guarded by a little wooden gate at the road. As we unlatched it the other day, we pondered the legality of our actions—but we were accompanied by Eddie Hayes, the New York lawyer who's defended Jon Gotti, the mafia cops and Andy Warhol's legacy, so we thought we'd be okay. It turns out that Si Newhouse's grass is short, lush and well-kept. Surprised?

Their street can be thought of as the Further Lane of Bellport. On it, every house is beautiful and large, by local standards—which is to say, each house is smaller and more dignified than those built to the standards that guide the East Hampton egotists nearly 50 miles further east.

Eric Shawn, the Fox News correspondent and UN-hater, lives across the street. Not too far away lives Lucy Danziger, the editor of Self. And while William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, lives in a massive white clapboard affair on the beach, the Newhouses live a little inland. (In our next installment, we'll be visiting some of those neighbors!) The Newhouses make up for their lack of coastline with their mega-lot.

On one lot sits the house, flanked by magnolias and Japanese maples. There is a little garden, chicken-wired off. On another lot is Victoria Newhouse's studio. On the third sits the guest house.

The erection of the copper-clad studio was as large a scandal as Bellport has seen in recent years. The town's conservative architecture review board were wary of the gleam and the modern design. Victoria is an architecture critic and historian. And by now, the copper has faded into a rich autumnal brown and the angular architecture melds nicely with the late-summer foliage.