Colonial Revival

Colonial Revival is the South Fork's look back at its own eighteenth century. From about 1885 into the 1930s, summer residents built new houses on colonial models and bought, moved and remodeled genuine eighteenth-century houses to make them look more "colonial" than they had been. Both kinds survive. Telling them apart is the first job when one comes up for sale.

How to recognize it

The East Hampton Village National Register nomination describes the style plainly: simple forms and symmetrical facades. The larger houses are often clapboard, with fine classical details: corner pilasters, small entrance porticos with slender columns, cornices on carved brackets (modillions), balustrades, three-part and Palladian windows.

On the South Fork the style comes in three versions:

• Large summer houses. Two full stories, a balanced front, a center entrance with a portico or porch, gambrel or gable roof with dormers. The 1899 William M. Carson House in East Hampton Village has a Georgian-style gambrel roof with dormers and a Federal-style entrance porch.
• Local-vernacular reproductions. Shingled houses modeled closely on East Hampton's own saltboxes and center-hall houses, with the colonial detail mostly at the front door. Mary Talmage's rental cottages on Jones Road (1910–1915) are the documented set: one is a shingled saltbox with a Georgian-style doorway and paneled shutters.
• Dutch Colonial Revival cottages. Gambrel roofs coming low over a porch, long shed dormers, shingle walls left unpainted, stone or brick chimneys. In 1891–1892 the Art Village in Shinnecock Hills was built this way: eight cottages and a studio for William Merritt Chase's summer art school.

Expect overlap with the Shingle Style. Town of Southampton surveyors repeatedly describe houses as "Colonial Revival/Shingle," with long roof slopes and shingle walls carrying Colonial Revival trim.

Where it concentrates

• East Hampton Village. Large Colonial Revival summer houses in the Summer Colony part of the village historic district. The Jones Road reproductions sit just to the southwest. On upper Main Street, six brick commercial buildings went up between 1906 and 1918.
• Shinnecock Hills. The Art Village cottages, which the Town survey treats as a potential historic district of 11 properties, plus a scattering of later Colonial Revival houses.
• Southampton Village. The James L. Breese House, "The Orchard," by McKim, Mead & White, classified by the National Park Service as Colonial Revival.
• Bridgehampton and Water Mill. The Town survey records early-twentieth-century Colonial Revival houses throughout the potential Bridgehampton Historic District, and Colonial Revival/Shingle hybrids in Water Mill.

Documented examples

• James L. Breese House ("The Orchard"), Southampton. National Register listed in 1980; architects McKim, Mead & White with Stanford White (firm profile). Now the Whitefield condominiums, with the music room and gardens kept.
• William M. Carson House (1899), East Hampton Village. Named in the village nomination as a representative large Colonial Revival summer house.
• Francis Newton House (1910), East Hampton Village. Designed from standardized plans by Grosvenor Atterbury; a separately nominated component.
• Mary Talmage cottages, Jones Road, East Hampton Village (1910–1915). Built to reproduce local eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century houses.
• Art Village cottages and studio, Shinnecock Hills (1891–1892). Designed by Janet and William Hoyt; Dutch Colonial Revival, gambrel-roofed, unpainted shingle.

The antiquarian remodel: a reading problem

The village nomination documents a habit that complicates any older house here. From 1885, summer residents bought eighteenth-century houses, moved them to better lots and had architects add whatever features were then thought to be "colonial." The saltbox at 14 James Lane, now the Home Sweet Home Museum, went through a long restoration beginning in 1908. Rowdy Hall was moved twice and remodeled. The nomination says these campaigns reduced integrity by today's standards but are themselves part of the history.

In practice, a "colonial" doorway or window pattern on an old house may be from 1910, not 1750. The National Register inventory form, the Town survey entry and the permit history are the way to separate the two. See Half-Houses and Saltboxes.

Renovation and historic review

A Certificate of Appropriateness is the local board's written approval for exterior work on a landmark or a property in a local historic district. No building permit issues without it.

• Village of East Hampton: Design Review Board, Chapter 176. The law also requires a certificate before anyone removes a member of a pre-1880 timber frame. That matters for antiquarian remodels built around an older frame.
• Village of Southampton: Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation, Chapter 65.
• Town of Southampton: Landmarks and Historic Districts Board. Town landmark designation requires the owner's written consent, and the board reviews demolition and construction applications for any pre-1941 structure.
• Town of East Hampton: Architectural Review Board, for landmarks and properties in Town historic districts.

National Register listing alone does not restrict a private owner's work. The Art Village and most of the Town of Southampton survey properties are potential districts and landmarks: the survey is a draft, and inclusion in it is not designation.

What the assessment roll does not tell you

New York's building-style code "Colonial" describes a two-story form, not this historical style. A 1990s center-hall house and a 1910 Colonial Revival house can carry the same code. On the South Fork records the Research Desk has reviewed, the style field reads "Unknown" anyway. Style is a judgment from the house and its documents.

Year built is no more reliable. The State manual separates actual year built, effective year built and year remodeled, and assessors estimate what they cannot inspect. A moved and remodeled eighteenth-century house can show a twentieth-century date, and the reverse. Use the nomination, the survey and the permit file.

Related: Georgian Revival, Shingle Style, all style guides.