Historic Fithian House On The Market For First Time In A Half-Century

Last Thursday, at 7 Fithian Lane, workers were busy repairing a wall where a bookshelf had been removed, moving boxes were strewn about, and long-haired cats stretched out on the rugs.

For the first time in 50 years, this historic East Hampton Village house is on the market — and moving day is coming soon for Jack Peltier. He shared the house with his partner and, later, husband, Charles Geoffrey B. Garrett, from 1970 until Mr. Garrett died in 2017 at age 91.

Mr. Garrett, an English physicist who went by Geoffrey, and Mr. Peltier, 85, a native of France who is retired from the airline industry, kept the house largely how they found it a half-century ago.

“The house has been re-shingled, the roof has been done, and, of course, repainted,” Mr. Peltier said. “It has been maintained all the time — you have to.”

Whether it will stay preserved is an open question, because the house is not a registered and protected historic structure. It’s outside the village historic district and not one of the village’s timber-frame landmarks.

The reason it has evaded the protection that other houses are subject to may be due to the fact that it’s not in its original location.

Known as the Fithian House, it was part of the Fithian family’s 30-acre East Hampton farm and originally stood where London Jewelers is now on Main Street. The house was moved and the farm was subdivided to create Fithian Lane. Exactly when the oldest parts of the house were built is a matter of debate.

Mr. Garrett had considered the Fithian House to be the twin of the Dominy House, a 1715 East Hampton house that was mostly demolished in 1946. Some evidence suggests the Fithian House was built in the late 17th century.

Among the documents that the East Hampton Village Building Department has regarding 7 Fithian Lane is a building-structure inventory form prepared for the New York State Parks and Recreation Department’s Division for Historic Preservation. Robert Hefner, the village historian, and Alison Hoagland of the Ladies Village Improvement Society filled out the form, indicating that they believed the house was built circa 1750.

“Although Enoch Fithian built a house on Main Street opposite Newtown Lane circa 1675, it was probably not this house,” the form reads. “This house, which originally faced Main Street, was probably built in the mid-18th century, perhaps by Enoch’s grandson David Fithian. The house belonged to David’s descendants until Jonathan sold it in 1918. Jonathan Fithian, born in 1835, died unmarried in 1922, and was a farmer who sold off his farm when he got older. In 1918, he sold his homestead to Mrs. Norman Barns.”

It was an 18-acre property when Mrs. Barns owned it. It was she who had the house moved back from Main Street to its present site.

The architect who oversaw the move of the Fithian House in 1919, J.G. Thorp, was responsible for “regularizing the fenestration on the front, adding wings to each end, moving an interior stairway and adding bathrooms.”

Mr. Peltier said he believes the house was moved during the winter, when it could be slid on the ice and snow.

For the past century, the house has sat on a concrete foundation, and well-preserved hand-hewn beams — with the bark still on — are visible on the ceiling of the unfinished basement.

Mr. Peltier said a village building inspector had been impressed by how dry the basement is for such an old house. “The building inspector, who is a good contact of mine, loved this house,” he added. “He said it’s one of the best in town.”

The two-and-a-half-story house has four fireplaces, including a beehive oven, that share one central chimney. The kitchen is in the addition, while the original kitchen, with the beehive oven, is now the dining room.

One of the stairwells to the upstairs bedrooms is decorated with red toile wallpaper depicting a scene. “I found it in New York for the bicentennial. It represents France before the revolution, sitting on the throne with the fleur-de-lis, welcoming America, the new nation,” Mr. Peltier said, adding that on the American side are “an Indian princess, two colonists and a black slave.”

Many of the walls have dark wood paneling, and the hardware on many of the doors appears to be original. There are wide-plank oak floors in most of the rooms.

“The parquet floor downstairs was covered with a new parquet to protect it. But if you remove it, you have just like this, probably,” Mr. Peltier said, indicating the wide-plank floors in an upstairs bedroom. Under the parquet downstairs, the floor is probably worn out in some spots, he said: “It was a farm after all, with a lot of children over the centuries.”

Fifty years ago, Mr. Garrett and Mr. Peltier were home-searching throughout Southampton, Bridgehampton and East Hampton. It wasn’t known as “the Hamptons” at that time, Mr. Peltier said — “It was ‘the end of Long Island’ then.”

Mr. Peltier was on a business trip in Europe when Mr. Garrett picked the Fithian House. He trusted his partner and approved. They bought the house in 1970 from tennis champion Helen Jacobs — she used to bake cookies in the beehive oven, Mr. Peltier said — and her partner, Virginia Gurnee.

“It’s a very quiet house,” he noted. “It’s very strange. It’s in the middle of a town — that’s what we wanted. It’s dead quiet at night.”

Now, the movers are scheduled to come this week to take his things to Savannah, Georgia. “All the furniture is coming down to Georgia,” he said. Some antique pieces are from his parents in France, and some he and Mr. Garrett bought over the years.

“It’s a battle of American, French, British antiques. They’re all mixed up,” Mr. Peltier said.

The cats are coming to Savannah, too. There are four, and they were abandoned under the porch of the Fithian House. Mr. Peltier said a Russian friend had told him, “When a cat finds your house, it’s good luck.” So they kept the cats.

Mr. Peltier has lived in “Yankee-land” for 60 years, and now he’d like to experience the South, he said.

He was born northeast of Paris in an area that had been a World War I battle zone. He was working for NATO in 1960 as a French-American liaison when the Americans convinced him to visit the United States. He did, and he liked it so much that he stayed.

He’s looking forward to living in Savannah, where he has family and friends, for a number of reasons.

“I was stationed in Morocco in the Air Force, so I love the tropical climate,” he said. “And it’s about the latitude of Morocco in Savannah.”

Though he won’t have a house in East Hampton anymore after selling the Fithian House and previously selling a rental property — an 1820 house that was moved to Pantigo Road from Connecticut — he says he will be back to visit East Hampton.

He and Mr. Garrett hosted parties at the Fithian House during Christmastime each year for friends and Bonackers who appreciated being in a historic house. “They say, ‘We feel the vibrations,’” Mr. Peltier said. And last year, a Fithian family reunion was held at the house, with about 30 Fithians in attendance.

“I hope it’s not destroyed,” Mr. Peltier said of the house. “We have to work for that. It’s very hard. And, you know, there’s a tendency: All the invasion that we have now, they come here to have a house in the Hamptons, it has to be a modern house. But some people like old mood. So we’ll see.”