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Thanks to the East Hampton Historical Society, we can see how local residents lived in the eighteenth century at the Mulford Farm, or the in the early nineteenth century at the Osborne-Jackson House. At Clinton Academy we can see one of the first chartered schools in New York State, constructed in 1784. And at the Marine Museum in Amagansett we learn of East Hampton’s maritime heritage. The Town House, on Main Street, is the earliest surviving one-room schoolhouse on Long Island, and the tiny Hook Schoolhouse nearby is a mid-eighteenth century Georgian treat.
Yes, that’s a lot of real estate to manage, especially in a community with extraordinarily expensive real estate prices. Safeguarding this physical and cultural legacy from generation to generation is not always easy. Whereas most small town historical societies have a single site with furnishings, the East Hampton Historical Society maintains a complex of museums and national landmark historic sites and a collection of thousands of objects from the area’s past.
One reason they have succeeded so well is the network of cooperation that has been built between the society and local government and other organizations. “Given East Hampton Village’s longstanding commitment to its heritage and history, the East Hampton Historical Society has been a dedicated and critical partner in every endeavor we have embarked upon,” commented Paul Rickenbach, mayor of East Hampton Village.
For a change of pace, one day each year the historical society looks at the present rather than the past and allows us a glimpse of the varied ways people live right now. That, of course, is their annual, much anticipated, house tour that takes place on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. The five houses on the tour range each year from traditional to modern in architecture, old to new in age, and meander through an assortment of interior design styles. The one unifying theme: they are all exciting to view and open doors not only into the rooms themselves as but also into the social ecology and current lifestyle of the Hamptons.
“Dust off your walking shoes,” said Joseph Aversano, the board member who selects the dwellings. “It’s time to stroll through private houses, contemplate a Japanese garden, admire a connoisseur’s art collection, enjoy a mid-century perched high over the ocean. It is our wonderful fund raiser of the holiday season.”
The Bluff Road Historic District in Amagansett is known (and envied) for a group of turn-of-the-twentieth-century shingle houses that look across a wide expanse of dunes to the Atlantic. The tour offers a rare opportunity to see one of these homes restored by owner/designer Ruth Ann McSpadden to all its period glory and decorated in a manner perfectly attuned to the architecture—including wicker furniture lovingly taken care by one family and handed down over the generations.
Moving east to Napeague, and jumping ahead in time, is an offbeat beachfront house on a spectacular site. The uninviting interlocking octagons of the original house presented a formidable challenge to the West Coast interior designer and the homeowner, David Netto. His resourceful solutions to the architectural problems show an inventive mind at work; they are entirely original, elegantly conceived and handsomely executed.
Poor Anne Boleyn. The second wife of Henry VIII was not only beheaded in 1536, but the wooden beams from one of her houses somehow made their way across the Atlantic and several centuries later are incorporated in a house in Georgica. A beautiful home with surrounding farmland and views over Georgica Pond, it is well worth viewing even without its Tudor pedigree—but the legend makes it even more intriguing.
A small cottage beyond repair on a desirable site in Georgica was replaced with a traditional style home with all the current amenities. It’s a familiar story and in this instance has a highly successful conclusion, thanks to the ingenuity of local architect, Bruce A.T. Siska, who designed a lovely family home that welcomes with a two-story hall and serpentine staircase, and that manages to be what we all want: luxurious, environmentally friendly and easy to maintain.
Rigorous detailing distinguishes an East Hampton village compound consisting of a main house, guesthouse, media barn and greenhouse, happily sharing a landscape of individual but related gardens. The main house, with suggestions of Frank Lloyd Wright, looks out on lawns and terraces, while the smaller buildings share a wooded shade garden. It’s a highly creative approach to both architecture and landscaping, and a refreshing antidote to cookie cutter design.
The East Hampton House and Garden tour kicks off with a cocktail party at an estate that is an exemplar of the original early twentieth century single-style houses of the “summer colony,” a style that has that inspired much of our current architecture. The home now of Jack and LuAnn Grubman, it is situated high on a dune in the heart of Georgica. The house has been sensitively and sympathetically expanded in successive generations to become a finely detailed, perfectly proportioned and superbly furnished classic East Hampton residence. Exactly where you’d want to be to celebrate the start of the 2013 house tour.