As Lives Changed, the House Came to the Rescue
For decades, Susan Herman loved her second home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., so much that whenever circumstances changed in her life, she preferred adjusting her living space over moving somewhere new.
After buying the house for $74,000 with her husband in 1978, the 1860s structure, a former butcher's shop that had one bathroom and a few tiny bedrooms, provided a low-key escape from the couple's primary residence in Manhattan.
'In the late 1970s, Sag Harbor was just emerging from a depressed time,' said Ms. Herman, now 78, who retired from running a preschool program at the Y.M. & Y.W.H.A. of Washington Heights and Inwood last November. 'So I've watched the town evolve over the years,' she noted, as it attracted more affluent urbanites.
Her home has also evolved. When Ms. Herman and her husband had two sons in the 1980s, they needed more space and added a two-story extension to accommodate the whole family, expanding the house to about 3,500 square feet.
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