She still sees Wrightsville Beach as it looked in the 1930s, when her grandmother operated a summer hotel here. Carrie Maie Landis sold that business in the 1960s, dividing the proceeds among her children, and Ginny Anne’s parents used their share to buy this 1925 cottage just three blocks away.

By combining the furniture left from the previous owners with an eclectic mix of family pieces and flea-market finds, Ginny Anne’s mother came up with a style distinctly her own. “This house is all about Mom. We have intentionally never added anything,” Ginny Anne says—except, of course, for the patina and piles of seashells, which her three children, Frank, Virginia, and Oliver, happily contributed.

Summers here were always “a fairy tale,” Ginny Anne says, recalling idyllic days spent in the family cottage. “We got up early, washed clothes, and went out to the beach; then came inside for a hot lunch of fish, crabs, shrimp, and fresh vegetables followed by a two-hour nap. We did simple things back then. It was another century.”

Her children, who once spent time sailing on the ocean and fishing on the sound, now bring their own families to the house. “My happiest childhood memories took place here,” says Frank as he lounges in the front-porch hammock. “We took our shoes off when we got here, and they stayed off for three months.” He and his brother and sister recall hunting for shark teeth in the marl under the carport and crafting sailboats out of two-by-fours, reeds from the yard, and Grandmother’s bedsheets.

As the Smith children reminisce on the front porch, they begin finishing one another’s sentences and contesting the accuracy of each sibling’s recollections. “The funniest part,” Virginia says, “is that we tell the same stories over and over.”

Dwarfed today by hotels, condos, and swanky new homes, the simple, two-story, shingled cottage is a reminder of traditions handed down from one generation to the next—and the next and the next. Ginny Anne is seeking historic designation to save the house from the threat of rising property taxes, but she has made some concessions to modernization (such as air-conditioning). Still, she will always favor the simpler way of life. “I just installed cable television,” she says in disbelief. “God only knows why you need that at the beach.”

ALSO: Check out the interiors of this coastal classic.