George A. Eldredge

George A. Eldredge is the local builder the 1988 National Register nomination for East Hampton Village singles out by name. Among the Shingle Style houses of the summer-colony years, it says, many were designed by regional architects, and "others were designed and built by local builder-architects, including Frank Grimshaw, James L'Hommedieu and especially George A. Eldredge."

That sentence matters for attribution. In East Hampton between roughly 1876 and 1910, the man who built a house was often also the man who drew it, or he drew it with an architect such as John Custis Lawrence. A house associated with Eldredge may be his design, his construction of another man's design, or both. The documents below say which.

The record is narrow and specific. It covers his own two houses, one commercial building on Main Street, one summer house on Georgica Road and one probable bungalow. It is not a catalogue of every shingled house in the Village, and a house should not be called an Eldredge house because it looks like one.

What the record shows he built

84 Egypt Lane, 1876. The nomination lists the 1876 George Eldredge House as an individual component of the multiple resource area, on a small village lot on the north side of the Village. It is one of the earliest dated works associated with his name. See Egypt Lane.

41 Huntting Lane, 1901. The Village's preservation consultant, Robert Hefner, describes the George A. Eldredge House as "designed by the builder" and uses it to show how the Shingle Style adapted to a modest, year-round house. Huntting Lane was opened in 1893 and built out within ten years with cottages for summer residents and for the tradesmen who built the summer colony, Eldredge and the builder Edward M. Gay among them. The lane became a Village historic district in 1999. See the Huntting Lane Historic District and Huntting Lane.

Edwards Drug Store, 153 Main Street, 1901. The nomination credits the design to Eldredge and J.C. Lawrence: a two-story shingled building with a gambrel roof, a gabled front, a second-story oriel window and an attic fanlight. It sits in the expanded village historic district and is one of the few non-residential buildings tied to him. See the Main Street Historic District.

S. Fisher Johnson House, Georgica Road, 1903–04. Designed by Lawrence and built by Eldredge, according to the nomination, which cites it for its pseudo-half-timber and stucco gables, a Tudor Revival influence on a Shingle Style house. Here the roles are separate: Lawrence designed, Eldredge built. See Georgica Road.

93 Egypt Lane, probably 1910. The East Hampton Library's Long Island Collection holds John Custis Lawrence's blueprints for a bungalow for Lorenzo E. Woodhouse and says the house was "probably built in 1910 by George Eldredge." The librarian notes that newspaper coverage may have confused it with a separate Woodhouse project at Louse Point. Treat it as a probable attribution.

Builder, architect or both

The East Hampton record uses three distinct roles, and Eldredge filled each of them at different times:

• Builder only. The Johnson House: Lawrence's design, Eldredge's construction.
• Co-designer. The Edwards Drug Store: credited to Eldredge and Lawrence together.
• Designer-builder. His own house on Huntting Lane: designed by the builder.

A 2023 East Hampton Historical Society lecture, reported by 27east, adds that Eldredge and Gay worked repeatedly with Lawrence, and that very little is known about the carpenters and trades who worked under them. That gap is real. The name on the record is the contracting builder, not every hand on the job.

Where his work concentrates

All of the documented work is inside the incorporated Village of East Hampton, on Egypt Lane, Huntting Lane, Main Street and Georgica Road. The houses sit in or near the Village's locally designated historic districts and the National Register multiple resource area. The nomination also records an earlier local building tradition: the three Federal-style houses of the Jericho Historic District are believed to have been built by members of the Jones family, East Hampton builders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

What historic review means for an Eldredge house

In a Village historic district, exterior alteration, demolition and new construction go to the Design Review Board, which issues a certificate of appropriateness (the Board's written approval that a change fits the house and the district) before work proceeds. Ordinary maintenance is exempt, according to the Village consultant's account. A National Register listing on its own is primarily honorary. Local designation is what carries review.

For these houses the practical questions are shingle and trim replacement, window changes, porch and dormer alterations, additions to the rear, and any change to the street setback that defines Huntting Lane and Egypt Lane. The shingled gambrel and gable forms that make an Eldredge house recognizable are the elements a board will look at first. See Renovating and rebuilding and Shingle Style.

What to know if you're buying or selling

State the role exactly. "Built by Eldredge" and "designed by Eldredge" are different claims, and the documents above support specific ones for specific houses. Anything beyond these five properties needs a document: a National Register component listing, a Village district report, an archival drawing or a contemporary newspaper notice.

Separate original fabric from later work. Many Village houses of this period were moved, enlarged or re-sided. A buyer should ask for the Village historic-district file, prior certificates of appropriateness, building permits and any survey photographs, so the house can be dated room by room rather than by its front elevation.

Considering an Eldredge-associated house?

Request a property brief that confirms the documented attribution, pulls the Village historic-district and permit history, and places the house against comparable Village sales.