Georgian Revival

Georgian Revival is the most formal of the South Fork's historical styles: a symmetrical front, usually five bays wide, a center door with a classical surround, and restrained classical trim. Examples come in brick, clapboard and, on the South Fork, shingle. It is less common than the Shingle Style or Colonial Revival. The National Park Service often files South Fork examples under Colonial Revival, so the label in a designation record may not match what a buyer sees.

The local precedent

The revival had a local model. East Hampton Village's National Register nomination identifies a group of late-eighteenth-century buildings showing "the influence of the popular Georgian style": two full stories, formal symmetrical facades facing the street, gable or gambrel roofs and classical details. Seven survive in the village. The nomination likens them to eighteenth-century Connecticut Valley architecture.

The finest is Clinton Academy (1784–1785) on Main Street, East Hampton. It has a five-bay center-entrance front, a gambrel roof with pedimented dormers and a domed belfry. Its brick end walls and clapboard front break with the village's shingle tradition. The nomination also names the "1770 House" and the Sherrill House on Main Street and the 1799 Miller Dayton House. These are original eighteenth-century buildings, not revivals, but they are what later designers were reviving. Except for the academy, all were built with shingle walls.

How to recognize the revival

• Front. Strict symmetry: five (sometimes seven) bays, center entrance, windows evenly spaced and lined up floor to floor.
• Door. A pedimented or columned surround, fanlight, sidelights or a portico.
• Roof. Side gable or gambrel, often with pedimented dormers; cornice with dentils or modillions.
• Material. Brick (sometimes laid in Flemish bond, with headers and stretchers alternating) or painted clapboard or shingle. Stone or wood keystones and splayed lintels over windows.
• Plan. Center hall with rooms on both sides; larger houses add lower wings joined by connectors ("hyphens").

Documented examples

• Guild Hall, East Hampton Village (1930–1931). Brick; designed by Aymar Embury II in what the nomination calls a "modified Georgian Revival" style, possibly inspired by the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg. It is a public cultural building, and the most accessible example on the South Fork.
• William M. Carson House (1899), East Hampton Village. A summer house with a Georgian-style gambrel roof and dormers and a Federal-style entrance porch. The nomination files it under Colonial Revival.
• Main Street commercial buildings, East Hampton Village (1906–1918). Six brick buildings with keystoned lintels, modillion cornices and, in places, Flemish bond brick.
• James L. Breese House ("The Orchard"), Southampton. McKim, Mead & White with Stanford White; National Register listed in 1980 and classified Colonial Revival. Now condominiums.
• New construction, Southampton (completed 2011). Fairfax & Sammons' portfolio describes a "seven-bay Georgian shingle house" with hyphens, wings and a double-height Ionic portico, clad in coursed white cedar shingle. It shows how the formal Georgian front is now built in the local material. See New Traditional.

In Water Mill, the Town of Southampton survey records the late-eighteenth-century Asher Benedict House. An earlier survey described it as showing "Georgian and/or Federal" features. It is an original house, not a revival.

Where it concentrates

The documented examples cluster along Main Street in East Hampton Village, with The Orchard and the 2011 house in Southampton Village. The Research Desk did not find a hamlet-level concentration of designated Georgian Revival houses elsewhere on the South Fork.

Renovation and historic review

Formal houses are hard to alter quietly. Symmetry means that a new window, a lost shutter or an off-center addition shows. Local boards look at exactly these points.

• Village of East Hampton: the Design Review Board's compatibility test names the proportions of the front facade, the proportion and arrangement of windows, roof slope and the spacing of houses along the street. Main Street is inside a local historic district.
• Village of Southampton: the Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation considers design, scale and massing, texture, materials and color, and the importance of the features being changed.
• Town of Southampton: the Landmarks and Historic Districts Board reviews demolition and construction applications for any structure built before 1941, in addition to designated landmarks.

A Certificate of Appropriateness is the board's written approval. No building permit is issued without one when the property is a landmark or inside a local district.

What the assessment roll does not tell you

New York's building-style list has "Colonial" and "Mansion" but nothing for Georgian Revival. On the South Fork records the Research Desk has reviewed, the style field reads "Unknown." Calling a house Georgian Revival is a judgment from its front, plan and documents.

Treat the roll's year built with the same caution. The State manual keeps actual year built, effective year built and year remodeled as separate entries, and allows estimates when the assessor cannot inspect. A brick front added to an older frame, or a 2000s house built to an eighteenth-century pattern, can confuse both the date and the label.

Related: Colonial Revival, Half-Houses and Saltboxes, all style guides.