Huntting Lane

Huntting Lane is a short street off Main Street that the Village of East Hampton protects as a whole. It was opened in 1893, when the proprietors of the Huntting Inn ran a lane down the middle of their home lot, pasture that had been in the Huntting family for two centuries, and built a bridge over the Hook Pond stream to reach Egypt Lane. Within ten years twelve houses stood on it. They still give the street its character.

The lane is in the Incorporated Village of East Hampton and is one of the Village's four local historic districts, alongside Main Street, the Hook and Ocean Avenue. It also falls within the expanded National Register district.

What the district protects

The Village's account, written by its preservation consultant in 2000, describes twelve historic houses alike in scale, form and shingled exteriors, set on either side of the street with similar setbacks and open front yards. The setting is the point: each house contributes to the rhythm of the lane, which is why the district regulates more than individual facades.

The mix is unusual. Greycroft, a large Shingle-style summer house by I.H. Green Jr., the architect the Village credits with bringing the Shingle style to East Hampton, stands with houses built for the local tradesmen who built the summer colony, among them the builder George A. Eldredge, whose own 1901 house the Village cites as the Shingle style scaled to a year-round residence. A group of Queen Anne houses, also built by local residents, completes the street. The National Register nomination adds the 1917 Woodhouse Playhouse by F.B. Hoffman.

At the Main Street end, the former Beecher House on the northeast corner is now East Hampton Village Hall.

Inside a Village historic district, owners cannot change the significant exterior elements of a property, beyond normal maintenance, without a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Design Review Board. Front-yard fences, porches, windows, siding, additions visible from the street and new accessory buildings should all be expected to go through review. The residents helped draft the district's guidelines; the buyer should read them.

The stream and the Nature Trail

The south end of the lane meets the Hook stream, the channel that feeds Hook Pond. The Village owns most of the stream and its wetlands, roughly 36 acres by a 2016 account, and the Ladies Village Improvement Society maintains the Nature Trail through them. Parcels backing onto this land gain protected open space behind them but can carry wetland setbacks and drainage constraints. Both belong in the survey.

Questions to settle before contract

• Is the house one of the twelve historic houses, and what do the district guidelines treat as significant on it?
• What has the Design Review Board approved on the property before, and what conditions run with those approvals?
• Does the rear of the parcel meet the Village wetlands, and what setbacks apply?
• Do existing accessory buildings have certificates of occupancy matching their use?
• Which Village zoning district applies, and what floor area remains?

Nearby

Egypt Lane is reached across the Hook stream. Dunemere Lane shares the turn-of-the-century development the nomination groups with Huntting Lane. Ocean Avenue is the Village's other summer-colony district. The East Hampton Village guide covers the Village as a whole.

Considering Huntting Lane?

Request a private pricing review for a specific Huntting Lane property from The Roebling Research Desk, organized around district status and review history, wetland position, approvals and the comparables that actually compete.