Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz

Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz was a New York architect who mostly designed commercial buildings. In East Hampton he designed two houses on Ocean Avenue, and one of them — the house he built for his sister Harriet and her husband, Schuyler Quackenbush — is, in the words of Paul Goldberger, "probably the most imitated house in all of the Hamptons."

The Village of East Hampton's historic-services narrative for the Ocean Avenue Historic District credits Eidlitz, with Isaac Henry Green Jr., as one of the outside architects who introduced the Shingle Style to East Hampton. Local architects followed their lead.

The two houses

The Quackenbush house, Ocean Avenue. The Village narrative describes the composition closely: an asymmetrical front, gambrel dormers of different sizes, windows in a varied rhythm, walls that project and recede, and a porch that cuts progressively deeper under the house. The narrative also records unusual stewardship: one family has held the house since about 1915 and kept it in original condition. In a market where most century-old houses have been enlarged, an unaltered example is the scarce asset.

58 Ocean Avenue (1897). Eidlitz's own house, built after years of summering in Main Street boarding houses.

The influence

The Village narrative points to the house directly across the street: John Custis Lawrence's 1907 house at 61 Ocean Avenue, which it describes as clearly influenced by the Quackenbush house. Goldberger's 2007 remark extends that influence to the present. A new-traditional house can quote the Quackenbush house closely; that makes it a descendant, not an Eidlitz.

What to look for

• Controlled asymmetry in the Shingle Style: no single feature dominates, yet nothing is evenly spaced.
• Gambrel dormers of different sizes on one roof.
• Porches carved into the mass of the house rather than attached to it.

How to verify

Use the Village of East Hampton's Ocean Avenue Historic District materials, East Hampton's Heritage (Ladies Village Improvement Society, 1982) and the Village building department file. For a house described as "in the manner of" the Quackenbush house, the building file will show its actual architect and date.

Considering an Ocean Avenue house?

Request a property brief from The Roebling Research Desk that places the house in the Ocean Avenue Historic District record, separates original fabric from later work, and sets out what Village review allows.