Main Street Historic District

The Main Street Historic District is East Hampton Village's oldest local historic district: 59 properties along the 1648 common, designated in 1986 together with the Village preservation law. Inside it, almost any visible exterior change needs a certificate of appropriateness from the Design Review Board before the Building Inspector will issue a permit.

The district runs from the south end of Main Street about three quarters of a mile north, ending where the commercial zone begins. It holds the front portions of most of the original home lots, the Village Green, James Lane, Town Pond, the South End Burying Ground and Mill Hill. The Village's preservation consultant counts 31 buildings erected before 1850 among them.

Three separate records describe this ground: the local district, the 1974 National Register district and a 1988 National Register boundary increase. They overlap but are not interchangeable, and only the local one imposes review.

What is designated, by whom and when

The Village Board of Trustees adopted Chapter 176, "Preservation of Historic Areas," on August 15, 1986 (Local Law No. 22-1986). The Village's own history of the program says the Main Street Historic District was designated that same year, the first of what are now four local districts: Main Street (1986), the Hook (1996), Huntting Lane (1999) and Ocean Avenue.

Under Chapter 176, the properties in each district are shown on Historic District Maps and listed by Suffolk County tax map number, both filed with the Village Clerk. That filed list, not a street address or a listing description, decides whether a parcel is in.

Separately, the National Register of Historic Places listed the East Hampton Village District on May 2, 1974, bounded by Main Street and James and Woods Lanes. The Village's history describes it as 26 properties around the Village Green. A 1988 boundary increase extended the National Register district northeast along Main Street to Newtown Lane and southwest along Ocean and Lee Avenues and Pond Lane to Hedges Lane.

The boundary in words

The Design Review Manual describes the local district as beginning at the south end of Main Street and running about three quarters of a mile north to the start of the commercial zone. It takes in the old common, now Main Street, James Lane and the Village Green, and the front portions of most of the 34 original home lots, which ran eight to twelve acres each. It also includes some undeveloped rear portions of original home lots that were open when the district was drawn.

The manual's map draws the line by tax block and lot, so side streets meet the district at its edges without being inside it. A side-street address near Main Street is not evidence of inclusion. Check the tax map number against the Village Clerk's filed list.

What designation changes for an owner

Local district (binding). Chapter 176 bars any exterior alteration, restoration, removal of a member of a pre-1880 timber frame, reconstruction, demolition, new construction or moving within the district without a certificate of appropriateness. A certificate of appropriateness is the Board's written approval that the work fits the historic character of the house and the district. It is in addition to, not in place of, a building permit.

• Normal maintenance is exempt. Repair that does not change design, material, color or exterior appearance needs no certificate. Repainting in the same color is maintenance; replacing a whole fence is not.
• Decision clock. The Board must approve, deny or approve with modifications within 60 days of a completed application, and may hold a public hearing.
• Expedited review. The chair or vice chair can approve work the guidelines list as eligible, or work with no effect on a contributing property's historic features or setting.
• Hardship. After a denial, an owner can apply to the Board of Trustees for relief, but must show the property cannot earn a reasonable return, cannot be adapted to another use that would, and that good-faith efforts to sell it to a preserving buyer failed.

National Register (honorific). The State Historic Preservation Office states that private owners using private funds can alter or demolish a Register-listed property within local rules; state or federal review applies only when state or federal money or permits are involved. Listing can make an owner-occupied house eligible for New York's 20% Historic Homeownership Rehabilitation Tax Credit, but only if the house is listed or contributing, sits in a qualifying census tract, and the project is approved before work begins.

Contributing and non-historic buildings

The manual classifies buildings less than fifty years old as non-historic. Changes to them are judged for compatibility with neighboring historic buildings, and work not visible from Main Street or James Lane, or that does not affect a historic building's setting, can go to expedited review. Historic buildings are held to the full guidelines.

The designation report's individual property entries make the classification. This page does not state the status of any private address; that comes from the report.

Documented buildings

The Village's documents name the following, all institutional or museum properties except where the manual cites a house as a design example:

• Home Sweet Home, 14 James Lane, a seventeenth-century saltbox the Village bought in 1927 and reshingled with 36-inch cypress shingles to match its eighteenth-century cover.
• Gardiner Windmill, built 1804 by Nathaniel Dominy V on the Gardiner home lot, restored by the Village in 1996.
• The Gardiner home lot on James Lane, described as the last intact original home lot. A 1994 subdivision kept the front five acres intact, with an agricultural easement on three acres of field and a visual easement to the windmill.
• St. Luke's Episcopal Church and Rectory and the East Hampton Library (1920s), which brought stone, stucco, slate and tile into the district, and Guild Hall (1930), brick and larger in scale. The manual treats all of them as contributing to the district's story.
• Clinton Academy, restored with clapboards in 1921, and the Village-owned Osborn-Jackson House.

Renovation and demolition

The manual's guidelines are specific:

• Siting. Early houses on their original sites close to Main Street or James Lane should not be moved on the lot. Houses that were moved back and remodeled in the Colonial Revival period should not be moved forward again.
• Fences. New picket fences take a baseboard and cap, with pickets no higher than 4 feet 6 inches. Solid board fences are not allowed on a front line, and chain link is not allowed on any property line.
• Plantings. Hedges, shrubs and trees within 10 feet of the street line are reviewed. A privet hedge kept at six feet is acceptable.
• Pools and courts go behind the house, and pool fencing does not extend forward of the rear wall.
• Additions are subordinate in scale, stepped back from the side walls, and get more latitude on rear façades.
• Home lots. The Board reviews subdivision plans for the undeveloped rear portions of home lots and comments to the Planning Board, with attention to hedgerows, fence lines and sight lines.
• Demolition. No historic building or significant component should be demolished. A demolition request based on structural failure needs an architect's or engineer's report with repair costs. The Board can require photographs and measured drawings, and plans for the replacement building.

The pre-1880 timber-frame clause in Chapter 176 is easy to miss: removing a single member of an early frame is regulated work, even inside the house.

Diligence for a buyer or seller

• Match the tax map number to the Village Clerk's filed district list. Then check the National Register boundaries separately.
• Pull every certificate of appropriateness and building permit for the property, and compare them with what stands today.
• Read the designation report's entry for the property to learn whether it is classified as historic.
• If the program includes an addition, a relocated structure, a pool or a rear-lot house, test it against the manual before pricing it in.
• Owners of early houses should document the timber frame before any interior work. The frame is regulated even where the room is not.
• A seller should assemble the approval history and any restoration evidence. "In the historic district" is a starting point, not a description.

The other three Village districts work under the same law with their own manuals: the Hook at the north end of Main Street, Huntting Lane and Ocean Avenue. The East Hampton Village guide covers the wider market, and renovating and rebuilding sets out the general approval sequence.

Considering a Main Street district property?

Request a property brief from The Roebling Research Desk: district and National Register status by tax map number, the property's classification in the designation report, its certificate and permit history, and the Village properties that actually compete with it.