Ocean Avenue

Ocean Avenue is the road East Hampton's summer colony was built along. It runs from the south end of Main Street, past Hook Pond, to Main Beach. The Village's preservation consultant, writing for the Village in 2008, traced it to Calf Pasture Lane, a farm road through pasture to the beach by Hook Pond, renamed Ocean Avenue by 1900.

The whole avenue lies in the Incorporated Village of East Hampton. Much of it is also inside one of the Village's four local historic districts, which makes it one of the most regulated residential streets in the Village and one of the best documented.

A local historic district

The Village's 2008 account counts fourteen houses on Ocean Avenue built between 1870 and 1907, the years in which the summer colony took its character. Ten are Shingle-style cottages. I.H. Green's Herrick and Munroe houses of the late 1880s are credited with introducing the style to East Hampton; the Munroe House's gambrel roof, recessed porch and plain manner became a model for later cottages. Three houses are by J.G. Thorp, the local architect whose restrained shingle work the Village credits with much of the summer colony's look. McKim, Mead and White's 1895 remodeling of the 1874 Satterthwaite House introduced the Colonial Revival to East Hampton and prompted two neighbors to follow in 1901.

The 1988 National Register nomination adds the 1907 Arthur Van Brunt House by J.C. Lawrence and records that the early eighteenth-century Bates House was moved from Main Street to Ocean Avenue in 1894 and remodeled.

The Ocean Avenue district adjoins the Main Street Historic District. Inside a Village district, owners cannot change the significant exterior elements of a property, beyond normal maintenance, without a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Design Review Board. The Board publishes an Ocean Avenue Historic District Design Review Manual. Additions, windows, roofing, porches, fences and landscape changes visible from the street should all be expected to go through review.

Hook Pond and Main Beach

Ocean Avenue's southern stretch passes Hook Pond. The pond's larger basin is owned by the East Hampton Town Trustees; its old outlet to the ocean has been blocked since the early 1930s and replaced by pipes the Village maintains. View of the pond, frontage on it and drainage toward it are different conditions, and the survey should say which applies.

The avenue ends at Main Beach, where, by the Village's account, summer residents' bathhouses have stood since 1876. Main Beach is one of the Village's five permit beaches. A permit is required to park there from May 15 to September 15, and daily parking in Lot 2 is sold through the ParkMobile app only. Living on Ocean Avenue does not confer a parking right.

Questions to settle before contract

• Is the parcel inside the Ocean Avenue local district, the Main Street district, or neither, and is it individually designated?
• Which elements of the house are significant under the district guidelines, and what has the Design Review Board approved before?
• Is the house one of those named in the nomination or the Village's district text, and do the current exterior and the record agree?
• Does the parcel front Hook Pond, and are any pond-edge structures permitted?
• Which Village zoning district applies, and what floor area and coverage remain?

Nearby

Lily Pond Lane runs west from the ocean end of the avenue. Lee Avenue runs alongside it inland. Dunemere Lane and Huntting Lane belong to the same summer-colony landscape on the Hook Pond side. The East Hampton Village guide covers the Village as a whole.

Considering Ocean Avenue?

Request a private pricing review for a specific Ocean Avenue property from The Roebling Research Desk, organized around historic-district status and review history, Hook Pond relationship, approvals and the comparables that actually compete.