Otto Spaeth was an industrialist, art collector, and for a time vice president of New York's Whitney Museum. His wife was active in the American Federation of Art and in 1952 Deputy Commissioner of the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennial. The beach house for the Spaeths paid homage to the Shingle House by McKim, Mead and White, the architects who had also designed the American Academy in Rome. The ground floor included a bedroom, a study, a living room, and a dining room as well as the kitchen. The upper floor featured two bedrooms and a hallway in which an OMNI shelf system was installed to present part of the Spaeths' art collection (which included Edward Hopper's Carolina Morning).