DEEDS & DON’TS
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE HOLLOW
In Wainscott, a piece of the East End’s agricultural past has just been saved from the wrecking ball. Built in the 1920s on the grounds of the Strong family potato farm on
Wainscott Hollow Road, a 224-square-foot shingled cottage long known as the “Little House” has narrowly escaped demolition, thanks to preservation efforts led by Esperanza León, a member of East Hampton Town’s Architectural Review Board. The
single-room structure, which once housed migrant workers from the South, had sat neglected since the 1980s, but León caught wind that new owners of the farm property had plans to tear it down in May, so she
León galvanized locals “to preserve this reminder of Wainscott’s farming history, as well as the equally neglected history of its occupants” galvanized like-minded locals “to preserve this reminder of Wainscott’s farming history,” she says, “as well as the equally neglected history of its occupants.” The group was given a hard deadline of July 7 to find the cottage a new home, and as of press time, it was earmarked for transfer to a nearby property listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In advance of the planned move, local builder Michael Davis and Stan Kazel of Dawn House Movers meticulously dismantled the structure (it has
THIS ISSUE’S
BIG
DEAL
Architect William Pedersen, founding partner of Kohn Pedersen Fox, has designed some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, but his most personal project is his own Shelter Island house, currently listed for $7.995 million with Sotheby’s International Realty’s Lawrence Ingolia and Jonathan Smith. Featuring 220 feet of frontage on Gardiners Bay, the sleek 4,640-squarefoot three-bedroom dwelling was built in 2005 and features an exterior of copper and New York bluestone, as well as glass, fir and iroko woods, and sandblasted concrete inside. “I work on large-scale buildings in my profesWilliam Pedersen sional life, so this house was a change of pace for me,” recounts Pedersen, Architect who purchased the three-acre parcel in 1981 and embarked on a lengthy design process with his late wife, Elizabeth. “It was a 20-year gestation. I was inspired by Gardiners Island rising out of the bay, so I wanted to design a building that appears to emerge naturally. It’s very much connected to the land.” —Bart Boehlert
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hc&g
cottagesgardens.com
august 15, 2021
THIS ISSUE’S BIG DEAL: MICHAEL MORAN/OTTO (EXTERIOR), RISE MEDIA FOR SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY (INTERIOR)
Piece By Piece The “Little House” in Wainscott, once a migrant worker’s cottage, has been dismantled, with plans to rebuild it on a new site in the future.