Rose Hill Road

Rose Hill Road runs south from Montauk Highway in Water Mill, an unincorporated hamlet governed by the Town of Southampton. Its record is specific: one National Register house and several more that the Town's 2014 draft historic resources survey identifies as potential landmarks.

Two of those houses were moved here. The best-known was moved 0.4 mile down the road in 1985, and the survey records another house moved here from the hamlet center.

Rosemary Lodge

Rosemary Lodge, also listed as the Rev. H.T. Rose House, stands at 322 Rose Hill Road. It is a two-and-a-half-story Shingle Style house begun in 1884 as an unfinished shell from plans by the Lowell, Massachusetts, architect Frederick W. Stickney, with a rear wing added in 1904. According to the National Register registration form, as quoted by 27east, the interior was finished by the original owner over years, and the form calls the building a highly intact example of the style.

In 1985 the house was moved 0.4 mile south from the southeast corner of Rose Hill Road and Montauk Highway to its present parcel. It was listed on the National Register in 2000. The form accepts the move, noting that the house "maintains the level, open and rural setting in which it was built."

National Register listing by itself places no specific restrictions on a private owner. Town landmark designation, for which the 2014 survey considered the house potentially eligible, would: improvements to a Town landmark are reviewed by the Landmarks and Historic Districts Board, and landmark status opens eligibility for a tax abatement and a preservation easement.

The survey houses

The Town's 2014 draft survey for Water Mill proposes a non-contiguous Water Mill Multiple Resource District, meaning a district made of scattered qualifying properties rather than one bounded area. It lists four more Rose Hill Road properties as potentially contributing:

• 386 Rose Hill Road, the Corwith-Jennings House. About 1900, designed by the local architect Walter Brady, in a mix of Craftsman, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival with a gambrel roof and an octagonal tower. The survey says it originally stood near the present Market Square, and the chapter history says the Jennings house was moved to Rose Hill Road when Market Square was built in 1976.
• 428 Rose Hill Road. A Tudor Revival house of about 1928 with a garage in the same style.
• 217 and 254 Rose Hill Road. Between them, a mid-twentieth-century modern house by the architect Peter Blake and a brick Colonial Revival house of about 1925. The survey extract does not make clear which address is which.

These are survey findings, not designations. Under the Town Code's landmark criteria, designation is a separate act of the Town Board.

Questions to settle before contract

• Is the house in the 2014 survey, and has it since been designated a Town landmark?
• For a moved house: the date of the move, the foundation, and which parts of the structure date from before and after.
• For Rosemary Lodge or a survey house: is any preservation easement or tax-abatement agreement recorded?
• Town zoning district and lot area for any planned addition; Town, not Village, rules apply here.

Nearby

Wickapogue Road reaches Water Mill from Southampton Village. The hamlet's farms, Mill Pond and Mecox Bay are covered on the Water Mill page. Herrick Road in the Village has a house moved from Water Mill's Mecox shore in 1922.

Considering Rose Hill Road?

Request a private pricing review of a specific Rose Hill Road property from The Roebling Research Desk. It covers National Register and Town landmark status, any move history, Town zoning and the comparable Water Mill sales.