House Tour Will Offer 'A Peek Behind The Hedgerows'

The broker didn’t have a key to an unoccupied house on Amagansett’s Main Street—so, naturally, Mary and Lyle Greenfield jimmied a window to get inside and take a look.

Built in 1898 for Isaac Mulford, the home had fallen into neglect, and it seemed practically haunted by 2014. But its bones looked sturdy and the foundation was sound.

The deal-maker was probably that Mary Greenfield’s grandfather had owned a house only five doors away, and this house, especially the front staircase, reminded her of that one.

“I said to Lyle, ‘I want to spend the rest of my life in this house with you,’” Ms. Greenfield recalled this week.

The couple bought the historic house and restored it with love, right down to two heart-shaped rocks they embedded in a patio behind the kitchen. And the results—along with four other houses, each unique in its own way—can be seen on Saturday, November 28, when the East Hampton Historical Society presents its annual house and garden tour in Amagansett and East Hampton, to be preceded on November 27 with a cocktail party at the Hirschfeld house on Georgica Beach, which the Clintons rented in previous summers.

But first let’s get back to the Greenfields’ house.

It was built by Samuel Schellinger Babcock and Lyman Babcock, the grandson and great-grandson of Samuel Schellinger, a respected builder, craftsman and millwright. The most recent inhabitant had been the late Wilson Griffing Jr., whom the Greenfields described as a tinkerer and relatively solitary man.

“We had no intention of adding 1 square foot to the original structure, nor of lifting it, installing a large basement, etc.,” Mr. Greenfield wrote in literature for the house tour. “The biggest challenge, perhaps, was opening up the rooms downstairs, to flow comfortably and naturally into each other.”

Acting as their own general contractors, the couple removed walls and 13 solid-core doors, whittling the number of separate rooms, widened entryways, installed load-bearing headers, and exposed the original beamed ceiling, meanwhile retaining the original wood floors and wainscoting. They also added a pool, cleared overgrowth and turned a horse barn into a guest cottage, and they’re in the process of converting a large two-story barn into a studio.

Some treasures they discovered have been put to new use: an old window now looks into the living room from just inside the front door, bricks from a mason relation of Mr. Griffing have been integrated into a walkway, and a large pantry was transformed into a “mermaid room” half-bath and a laundry room.

Dark trim was replaced with tranquil blues, whites and grays throughout the house to complement abundant sunlight on the half-acre in downtown Amagansett. In fact, passersby most likely will have noticed the distinctive light blue front door to the house, through which they can finally walk on November 28 when they take the house tour.

Not far away on Amagansett’s Main Street will be another stop on the tour—“the Little Cottage,” described as a quintessential Cape Cod-style house, which shares property with a new house that furnishes more ample living space. The interior design is by Tom Samet of Samet & Wold, whose houses “always have a lot of flair,” according to Joseph Aversano, who chairs the historical society’s house tour.

The other three homes are in East Hampton. Tour literature describes one, a gambrel-roofed affair on Egypt Lane, as “a secluded family compound [that] unfolds at the end of a long gated drive.” Joining the main house are a guest cottage, manicured gardens, a pool house, pergola and tennis court.

“I call this ‘a historic peek behind the hedgerows,’” Mr. Aversano said. “It’s fun to peek into people’s lives.”

Another house, on Drew Lane, was built as a guest cottage for Dr. Frederick K. Hollister, whose Albro & Lindeberg-designed stucco summer house is nearby on Lily Pond Lane. The shingled guest cottage, with its English garden, “exudes the taste and understatement of the turn of the 20th century, a time when many of the summer colonists preferred a small house to a large manse,” a description explains.

Tour-takers will also have the rare privilege of exploring the Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran House and Studio on Main Street, which is in the process of being restored so that it can at long last be opened to the public. Built in 1884, it was the first artist’s studio in East Hampton and a hub for artists at the end of the 19th century. The building itself is “a quirky, Queen Anne-style studio cottage … the first experimental domestic architecture on Long Island,” says the historical society.

The kickoff cocktail party on Friday, November 27, will take place at Elie Hirschfeld’s home on Lily Pond Lane and Georgica Beach, which Bill and Hillary Clinton rented in two consecutive summers not long ago. Built in 1920, the house is virtually on top of the ocean, with views described as spectacular. According to the society, the architect John Custis Lawrence incorporated Swiss-looking balconies and Arts & Crafts columns into this residence.

Tickets to the cocktail party, which runs from 6 to 8 p.m., cost $200 and include admission to the house tour the next day. Tickets to the tour alone, which runs from 1 to 4:30 p.m., cost $65 in advance and $75 the day of the tour. They can be purchased online at www.easthamptonhistory.org, or by calling 324-6850.