Dimon House, Saved and Landmarked, Now Restored

Developer Jason Khan’s plans for 14 Flying Point Road in Water Mill were all set and approved: He would raze the existing home on the recently acquired 2-acre-plus property and replace it with a new house, a pool, a detached garage and a recreational building.

He had already determined that the existing house, which historically had belonged to the Dimon family, would be far too expensive to restore, not just because of the extent and the intricacy of the work involved but also due to high inflation for building materials and labor. However, thanks to the persistence of Southampton Town Planning Director David Wilcox, Khan agreed to a plan to preserve the circa 1880 house in exchange for a subdivision that would enable him to build his new home side by side with the Dimon house, which would be restored and landmarked.

“Big credit to him,” Khan said of Wilcox last week. “He really petitioned me to consider this, and I told him no maybe 100 times before I said yes.”

The restoration of the Dimon house is now complete. While giving a tour last week, Khan explained all of the work that went into it while maintaining its historic details.

The windows and doors follow the original fenestrations. And the siding matches: clapboard on the bottom portion, shingles in the middle and staggered shingles on the top portion.

The enclosed porch was opened up to match historical photos provided by the Southampton Town Landmarks & Historic Districts Board and the Southampton History Museum.

The two original front entrances are maintained, and for a historic vibe, the porch now includes a gas lantern.

The second front door leads to a library with built-in shelves painted deep blue. The primary front door opens to a two-story foyer and staircase, with chevron flooring and white walls with picture frame molding.

One of the challenges of designing the interior of the house was the window placement, since the window openings could not be moved or removed.

“You have a lot of windows, but you can’t change that,” Khan said as he showed off the first-floor junior primary bedroom and bathroom.

In new construction, the floor plan comes first, and then the windows are added to the design, he explained. To maintain the Dimon house’s historic integrity, the floor plan had to come second to the fenestrations.

“You have to work with what’s outside,” Khan said.

The main floor also includes a temperature-controlled wine room and a living room with a gas fireplace.

The kitchen with a large island has appliances by JennAir, a high-end brand that dates back to 1947, but doesn’t have the same name recognition as its most popular competitors.

“I love what they did,” Khan said of JennAir. “They hired from Miele and Sub-Zero, and they raised it to the next level.”

The kitchen has two dishwashers, a large gas range and double convection oven, an in-wall convection oven, microwave and warming drawer trio, and walnut cabinets.

Walnut cabinetry is a motif found in several rooms of the house, from bathrooms to living areas. This is a nod to the black walnut trees found on the Dimon property.

“Of course it costs more, but I think it honors the history of having that kind of mature vegetation next door,” he said of choosing walnut over the standard oak.

Under the subdivision and preservation plan, the Dimon house was moved northwest and placed on a new foundation, allowing for a full basement with 10-foot ceilings. Khan’s new house is under construction on the other half of the subdivision, where the walnut trees stand.

Upstairs in the primary suite’s bathroom is a soaking tub plus a shower with digitally controlled dual shower heads. Rounding out the top floors are four more en suite bedrooms plus a laundry located within the roof peak at the front of the house.

“I think it is the coolest looking laundry room ever,” Khan said. “It has the best high ceilings and everything.”

On the lower level is a lounge with a gas fireplace and wet bar, a workout area, a sauna, a screening room by Elite Electrical and Design, and an interior courtyard with stairs up to the pool area, which features a fire pit and an outdoor grill, both hooked up to natural gas.

In all, there are eight bedrooms and 11 bathrooms; each bathroom is outfitted with Italian tile and Kohler fixtures.

“For a historic house, it has everything,” Khan remarked.

The Dimon house had a nonhistoric attached garage when he purchased it. That garage was removed, and a new addition was built in its footprint.

Because the house is now a historic landmark, an attached garage is not permitted, Khan pointed out. So now the renovated house’s mudroom leads to a breezeway connected to a new two-car-plus detached garage.

The freestanding pool house has a wet bar, a full bathroom and an outdoor shower. Mature hedges that were retained offer privacy, and Anner Reyes’s landscaping company Hampton Roots is responsible for the grounds.

Khan said he worked in preservation for 25 years, which is one of the reasons Wilcox appealed to him to save the Dimon house. In fact, Khan had recently renovated the historic Wooley house in Southampton Village, and that house served as the 2021 Hampton Designer Showhouse.

Having gone through the Wooley house restoration during the COVID pandemic, he knew what would be involved in restoring the Dimon house — and the costs.

“I was very hesitant to do it because I know what it costs to do restoration, surgically rebuilding a house from inside out,” he said. “It’s much more labor intensive, and it’s much more time.”

This kind of work requires specialists to replace beams in an existing house while making it hurricane resilient and achieving an acceptable HERS rating, he noted.

When Wilcox explained to him the history of the house and of the Dimon family, who owned approximately 150 acres at one time and donated the Southampton bypass, he agreed to think about preserving the house, he recalled.

Chris Dimon, the great-grandson of C. Edwin Dimon, who operated a 90-acre dairy farm there, also reached out to Khan.

“All those things tugged at my heart and my preservation background,” Khan said.

The town offered the subdivision and accelerated approval to sweeten the pot, and he agreed.

“Everyone worked hand in hand” — the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Planning Board, the landmarks board — to get it done in record time, Khan said, also crediting Southampton Town Planning and Development Administrator Janice Scherer.

Wilcox said the town should be very appreciative of Khan’s interest in and dedication to preserving the Dimon house.

“We don’t get many developers like you,” he said. “I think it’s just fantastic that you stepped up and agreed to take the recommendations of the landmarks preservation board and actually restore a house and bring it back to what it once looked like. It’s just unheard of.”

Khan also praised his architect, Ryan Kesner, for making the new plans for the property a priority after the original plans had already been complete and approved.

“Talk about going back to the drawing board,” Khan said.

To fit both the Dimon house and the new house he envisioned on the now-subdivided property, he abandoned plans for a detached garage and a large recreation building that were going to complement the new house. The new house will come with a larger attached garage and a pool house instead.

Khan plans to keep the new house for personal use, while the Dimon house is now for sale, seeking $6.75 million, listed by the JC Londono Team.