Grey Gardens Carriage House Is on East Hampton House Tour

Last year, the East Hampton Historical Society’s annual Thanksgiving weekend House & Garden Tour featured the storied Grey Gardens, once home to the reclusive and eccentric “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, who were the inspirations for a documentary, a narrative film and a musical, each one named after the West End Road estate. This year, the tour will return to the Georgica neighborhood for a stop next door at a residence that had been the Grey Gardens carriage house until the early 1950s, when the Beales split it off from the estate and sold it.

Architect Joseph Greenleaf Thorp designed both Grey Gardens and the carriage house, which were built circa 1897-1898 and purchased by Big Edie’s husband, Phelan Beale, in 1924. Since 2018, the carriage house has belonged to a London-based couple with an affinity for historical preservation.

The family consists of a husband, wife and their teenage son. From London last week, the wife explained that they are very private people, but strong supporters of the East Hampton Historical Society’s mission to preserve and elevate East Hampton’s history in a world where things are changing quickly. She called the society’s work noble and extraordinarily important. That’s why they agreed to put their house on the tour — though they asked that their names not be shared.

She explained that when they purchased the house in 2018, it was the first time it had been on the market in more than half a century.

“It had been owned by two generations of a wonderful family, who also very much revered the history of East Hampton and the home in particular,” she said.

She said that in becoming stewards of the house, they also became stewards of that family’s personal collection: The seller gifted them “a treasure trove spanning six decades of historic books and newspaper clippings about Grey Gardens, East Hampton and the broader East End.”

Long before purchasing the house in 2018, she was familiar with it. She shared that in the early 2000s she and her husband lived in New York and spent four summers sailing and living on their sailboat, docked in Three Mile Harbor.

“It was really a pleasure to get off the water from time to time, and when we did so, we cycled fairly extensively,” she said.

Their favorite loop was to go from Apaquogue Road to West End Road down to Georgica Beach and around Lily Pond.

“Fast forward many years,” she said. “We had since had our son, and we’d started spending part of each summer back in East Hampton, we always thought that at a certain point we would actually put down roots and buy.”

When she saw the listing for the Grey Gardens carriage house come up, she knew exactly which home it was, she recalled. “I’ve been past it countless times over the course of visits dating 35 years back.”

She told her husband that if this was the time to buy, this house was the one.

“We came out to East Hampton a week later, as we planned to anyway, and it was the only house that we viewed, and we made an offer the next day, and it really just sits at the epicenter of our family’s happy place,” she said.

She noted that because the structure was built as a carriage house servicing Grey Gardens, the front of the house faces the rear of Grey Gardens rather than the street.

“We would never dream of changing the original part of the home,” she said.

Prior to them purchasing the house in 2018, there had been two rounds of additions. In the mid to late 1950s, previous owners had added on what is now the kitchen, rear entrance utility room and an en suite bedroom. Then in the 1990s, the carriage room was added onto with a two-story wing that consisted of a living-dining area, two bedrooms and a bathroom, and a second-floor entertainment room with a view overlooking Lily Pond, Georgia Beach and the ocean.

“When we purchased the house, we did not add onto it in any meaningful way,” she said. “We updated the kitchen, the bathrooms — took one out, put one in. We transformed that relatively new upstairs entertainment area into our master bedroom suite and did a slight repurposing of the two bedrooms and shared bathroom downstairs so everything stayed in the same place. We created two doors into the bedrooms, and then a shared study area that opens to the bathroom, rather than walking into the carriage room, staring straight into a bathroom.”

She said that while they kept the structure largely the same, they updated the spaces to better suit their lifestyle, and the original part of the house — its shiplap, pine floors, fireplace and stairway — has stayed exactly the same.

“The dormer windows upstairs, which were the original hayloft windows, remain a bathroom and what used to be the master bedroom of the family who purchased it in the late ’50s,” she added.

Living in a historic home was nothing new for the couple. They previously purchased and renovated a Manhattan brownstone built in 1898, and their primary residence, in London, was built in 1896.

They find it appealing to preserve history but update it for modern life. She worked with decorator and designer Jeffrey Bilhuber on the interior decoration and redesign of this house, as well as her primary residence.

She said her redecoration vision was a bright and quirky family sanctuary that brings together favorite old things: “antiques or just old pieces of ours that we had had in New York or we had in London and we’d had over time, along with found antique items.”

It’s a nod to what the original summer colony houses always were, with regard to decoration, she explained. In such houses, the furnishings, decorations and family belongings had lived through their usable lives in primary homes over the decades and the centuries and been moved out to the summer place. “As opposed to coming into a home and redecorating it from top to bottom with new purchases,” she added.

Among the most noticeable features visitors will see in the home is the “color language.”

“All of the floors, doors, window frames and the muntins and the windows are all painted the same color of green,” she said, and in the spring, especially, the green of the surroundings — the grasses around Lily Pond, the lawn, trees and gardens of the home — comes through the house.

The carriage room itself has a noticeable sense of history, including one of the structure’s original shingles — a gift from the previous owners — framed and displayed.

“Even though the decor is quite fresh, it certainly lends itself to its historical context,” she said.

And then there are the views.

“Given the location of the home, the views from the upper floor are really quite special. Because as you work your way around from the Apaquogue Road side, you look straight out on a nature reserve — usually full of deer — and then as you sweep your view around towards Georgica Beach, you’re looking at Lily Pond, and then you’re looking at the ocean, and then you’re looking at the gardens, until you come around to the rear of Grey Gardens. So you really do feel like you are in an area of natural beauty,” she said.

The 39th annual tour kicks off with a cocktail party on Friday, November 29, at the Maidstone Club from 6 to 8 p.m. The tour itself takes place on Saturday, November 30, from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Tickets to the Maidstone cocktail party are $275 each, which includes entry to the tour the following day. Tickets to the self-guided tour only are $95 in advance of Thanksgiving and $120 on November 29 and 30. Tickets can be purchased via easthamptonhistory.org or 631-324-6850, or in person at Clinton Academy. Tour programs can be picked up starting at 10 a.m. on Friday, November 29, at Clinton Academy, 151 Main Street, East Hampton.