It all started with Bill’s habit of cruising for suburban real estate. “I joke that he made a semi-profession of driving Realtors crazy,” Pamela said. “He was really interested in the houses, just not in buying them.” The Realtors, naturally, did not get the distinction. “They’d keep calling and calling, and finally they’d give up.” The Matassonis then lived in a spacious loft with two terraces and a greenhouse just south of Madison Square Garden. They also owned — still own — a 1730 Colonial near the tip of Long Island’s north fork. Yet a void existed in Bill’s domestic soul. He adored houses designed in the International Style — those sleek, glassy obelisks with open floor plans, of which Philip Johnson’s own Glass House, also in New Canaan, is a seminal example. And so on weekends, the Matassonis lit out for suburbia in search of the perfect habitable cube.
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