'Red Barn' Destroyed In Fire Had A Colorful Life

John A. Acquino vividly remembers spending time in his family's old red barn at 88 North Main Street in Southampton Village. The barn was part of a complex of buildings used for the family's carpentry business, Harry H. Wilde Inc.

Believed to have been built in the late 1600s by the Halsey family, from which Mr. Acquino is descended, the barn was used to shelter cattle when the property was a farm and still connected to 80 North Main Street, where today there still is a Colonial-style house that had been occupied by Halseys and Wildes until it left the family's hands in 1982.

Harry Wilde, Mr. Acquino's uncle, established his construction business in the 1940s, utilizing a combination of the barn and sheds from the old farm. He also built a structure that served as an office, a mill house and a storage space for materials.

“I spent a lot of time in that barn, playing, as a kid, Mr. Acquino recalled last week. “It was always interesting, as a kid, going through there. The barn was fantastic.”

That piece of Southampton Village history was lost on Saturday, February 13, after it was destroyed in a fire. The Southampton Fire Department, as well as the the Hampton Bays and North Sea fire departments, spent an hour extinguishing the blaze on that frigid morning. The Southampton Village Department of Fire Prevention is investigating what caused the fire, and Fire Marshal Dean McNamara did not return a call to see if the cause had been determined.

The barn was said to be the oldest one standing in the village. Unfortunately, said Tom Edmonds, executive director of the Southampton Historical Museum, that organization does not have much documentation about it—a lesson now learned.

“It’s sad, because we didn’t know about it,” Mr. Edmonds said. “I think this highlights [the fact that] the only way we know about historic buildings is if people turn in information about historic buildings. We’re not actively going out and documenting everything like we should.

“There are so few barns left on Long Island, period," the executive director added. “I think there’s only a handful of barns on the East End. Here would’ve been another one, if we had known.”

Although the barn was no longer in Mr. Acquino's family—his father, also John, took over the business after Mr. Wilde's death in the 1960s and later sold the property in the early 1990s—the North Sea resident remembers many of its details.

In one corner on the ground floor was an old oak phone booth he liked to play in. Mr. Wilde and the older John stored their duck hunting gear in there. And on the second floor—accessed by an exterior staircase that led up to a landing—was a vast collection of doors and windows used for the construction business.

“The barn was the really old part of it," Mr. Acquino said. "In fact, my Uncle Art [Wilde] told me, when he was a little kid, he and a bunch of his friends were playing in the hay loft and his grandfather, who was a Halsey … got mad and threw a pitchfork up there. He threw it up to the doors and it got stuck in the old beams up there.

“He said they didn’t move for six or seven hours, they were scared to death,” he added with a laugh.

Mr. Acquino's parents sold 88 North Main Street to Spanish artist Ginés Serran-Pagan in 1996, after Harry H. Wilde Inc. went out of business. Mr. Serran-Pagan stuccoed the building where the office and mill house were located and transformed it into his home, which also served as an art gallery. He called the compound Red Barn Atelier.

Mr. Serran-Pagan housed many animals in the old barn, but ran into problems with Southampton Village officials after neighbors complained about the noise the chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and a llama made. He sold the property in 2002, telling The Press back that then he "was forced to close Red Barn and leave Southampton.

“They tried to destroy my career, my family name, make my life as difficult as possible over some farm animals,” he had said of village officials, specifically then-Mayor Joseph Romanosky.

The property was purchased by New York City philanthropist and patron of the arts Stuart Pivar for about $1.6 million. Mr. Pivar still owns it, according to town records, and artist Helen Matsos is living there currently. Mr. Acquino said he spoke with her shortly after the fire and learned that a man who was sleeping in a building adjacent to the barn at the time of the blaze, who was not injured, was going to help her renovate it. Ms. Matsos was not available for comment.

When Mr. Serran-Pagan learned that the barn was destroyed, he took to Facebook on February 17 to express his sadness.

"My old Red Barn burned down. Sad news," he wrote. "Amidst the sad news, I'm happy to say that during the time I owned it I open[ed] its doors as well to over 70 farm animals. They lived there happily. Many of them were born within its historic walls.

"And I'm proud to say that I defended the barn and my animals in court against the injustice of the mayor of Southampton, a cruel man who, at the time, using his power, wanted to eliminate the farm animals from the barn and from the Village of Southampton.

"Our memories will remain alive forever," he continued. "RIP one of the oldest Red Barns in America."

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