Herrick Road

Herrick Road is a village street in the Incorporated Village of Southampton, running east from the South Main Street area past Little Plains Road. Its stock is smaller and more varied than the summer-colony roads: the 1985 National Register nomination describes a "small collection of early twentieth century" Colonial Revival houses beside South Main Street and includes them in the Southampton Village Historic District. At the Little Plains Road corner is Balcastle, listed on its own.

The Village's 2026 draft boundary report re-inventories the road house by house, on both sides. It is the most detailed public record of the street, and it shows a mix: contributing houses from the 1910s to the early 1950s alongside late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century houses classed as non-contributing.

What the 2026 inventory shows

Read as a whole, the draft's Herrick Road entries describe two- and two-and-a-half-story shingled houses of about 1910 to 1950, many with garages of the same date. Typical details are pedimented porticos, sidelights, dentiled cornices, and some stucco and half-timbering. Replacement vinyl windows are common and do not by themselves remove contributing status. Houses built after the period of significance are non-contributing. Two houses (134 and 260) appear as one story on the 1964 Sanborn map, so they were enlarged later.

Two buildings stand out:

• Balcastle, 143 Herrick Road. Listed on the National Register in 1986. A one-story brick house with an octagonal tower at the west and a two-story square tower at the east, built in 1910 by the builder and cabinetmaker Edward Elliston. The draft records that in the 1920s it was rented as a dress shop, tea room and antique shop. The 1985 nomination calls it the village's only castellated Gothic Revival building.
• Tower House, 215 Herrick Road. A shingled summer house of the 1890s with a round corner tower, moved across the fields from the west side of Mecox Bay in Water Mill in the winter of 1922. It was a boarding house for decades and was bought by Southampton Hospital in 1971.

What it means for a house here

Inside the district, the Village's homeowner guide says exterior alterations, demolition and new construction need a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation before a building permit issues. A non-contributing house is still reviewed, but the question becomes compatibility with its contributing neighbors, not preservation of its own fabric.

The 2026 draft also moves the period of significance forward to 1954. Some postwar houses previously treated as non-contributing may be reclassified. A buyer planning to replace a 1950s house should know which classification will apply when the application is heard.

Questions to settle before contract

• Inside the 1988 district, and contributing under the 1986 inventory or the 2026 re-evaluation?
• Prior Certificates of Appropriateness, and any work done without one.
• For enlarged houses: when the addition was built and whether it was approved.
• Garage and accessory-building status; several Herrick Road garages are inventoried in their own right.

Nearby

Little Plains Road crosses at Balcastle and runs south to the ocean. Wickapogue Road is the Village's farmstead district to the east. First Neck Lane and Ox Pasture Road are the summer-colony roads west of Lake Agawam. Water Mill, the Tower House's first location, is covered on the Water Mill page. See Southampton Village.

Considering Herrick Road?

Request a private pricing review of a specific Herrick Road property from The Roebling Research Desk. It covers district and contributing status under both inventories, the approval history and the comparable village-street sales.