HomeMy WebLinkAboutOR-27 FOR OFFICE USE ONLY
BUILDING-STRUCTURE INVENTORY FORM
UNIQUE SITE NO. 10?/01OV 103
DIVISION FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION QUAD OR-27
NEW YORK STATE PARKS AND RECREATION SERIES
ALBANY,NEW YORK (51 8)4740479 NEG. NO.
YOUR NAME:'12puin of Southn3 d/.SPL ' DATE: Nayember_ 1987-
YOUR ADDRESS:Town Hall, main Rd. TELEPHONE: 516 765 1892
Southold, LT, NY 11971
ORGANIZATION (if any):Southold Town Community Development 2ffice
IDENTIFICATION
I. BUILDING NAME(S): Terry/Edwards House
2. COUNTY: Suffolk TOWN/CITY: Southold VILLAGE: Orient
3. STREET LOCATION: main Rd• NE Corner Edwards Ln.
4. OWNERSHIP: a. public ❑ b. private
5. PRESENT OWNER: Donald Brinkmann ADDRESS: Main Rd. , Orient
0. USE:: Original: residence Present: residence
7, ACCESSIBILITY TO PUBLIC: Exterior visible from public road: Yes ❑ No ❑
Interior accessible: Explain private residence
DESCRIPTION
8. BLJILDING a. clapboard ❑ b. stone ❑ c. brick ❑ d. board and batten ❑
MATERIAL: e. cobblestone ❑ f. shingles 91 g. stucco ❑ other:
9. STRUCTURAL a. wood frame with interlocking joints ❑
SYSTEM: b. wood frame with light members ❑
(if kn(xvn) c. masonry load bearing walls
d. metal (explain)
e. other
10. CONDITION: a. excellent JE1 b. good ❑ c. fair ❑ d. deteriorated ❑
1 I. INTEGRITY: a. original site Ll b. moved ❑ if so,when?
c. list major alterations and dates (if known):
12. PHOTO:neg s KK V--5, fm S 13. MAP:NYS DOT Orient quad
.t ,• ,1' dfi �i'v. @'O lSB rowns Hitl 2•�<!
25
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' village Tr
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14. THREATS TO BUILDING: a. none known 111 b.zoning❑ c. roads ❑
d. developers ❑ e. deterioration ❑
f. other:
15. RELATED OUTBUILDINGS AND PROPERTY:
a. barn%] b. carriage house El c. garage
d. privy ❑ e. shed 2 f. greenhouse ❑
g. shop ❑ h. gardens ❑
i. landscape features:
j. other:
lo. SURROUNDINGS OF THE BUILDING (check more than one if necessary):
a.open land f] b. woodland1
c. scattered buildings
d.densely built-up ❑ e. commercial ❑
f. industrial ❑ g. residential
h.other:
17. INTF'.RRELATIONSHIP OF BUILDING AND SURROUNDINGS:
(Indicate if building or structure is in an historic district)
Low density residential area of Main Rd. (NYS Rte 25), historic Kings
Hwy. Predominantly open land surrounds the house, partially wooded to
N. One of several vintage residences of its type in the area.
18. OTHER NOTABLE FEATURES OF BUILDING AND SITE (including interior features if known):
Early 12 story, 3 bay, side entrance plan, gable roof house with high
roof plate. Off-center chimney. l story, gable roof, center chimney
wing on east with dentils and semi-hexagonal bay window. Handsome
entrance with pilasters, molded architrave, transom, sidelights,
and louvered door.
SIGNIFICANCE
19. DATE OF INITIAL CONSTRUCTION: Early 19th century, probably 1820-40.
ARCHITECT:
BUILDER:
20. HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL IMPORTANCE:
This fine, well preserved old house is completely documented. It adds
to the historic significance of the streetscape.
21. SOURCES:
Report, Southold Town Landmarks Preservation Comm. , 11/14/86
"Background of the Edwards House, Orient", typescript by Phyllis Edwards
Hale n.d.
22. THEME: '
Terry/Edwards HouseOR-27
Orient
Herzel
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Collection Society for the -Preservation of
Long Teland Antiquities.
0r, 27
Terry/fdward house
Main Road Orient
s ■
i
Circa 1750 and 1835 $295,000.
Two of the four bedrooms have Fireplaces,truing room with
fireplace,eaten knchen with wood-burning stove,den,pantry, Thrs beaulifd odd barn and shed are included with ft
Itgee small hiritim rooms1 acre. previous house
For Sale
.�qurt Tlewis broker
1987-88
OR-27
BACKGROUND OF THE EDWARDS HOUSE, ORIENT
by
Phyllis Edwards Hale (Mrs . Rode M. Hale}
Mrs . Rode Hale has been familiar with the Edwards house since her
childhood , and has lived near it - and once in it - during most of her
life . Her family gave the Edwards name to the house and the lane gust
west of it.
As a little girl named Phyllis Edwards, Mrs . Hale lived in the
John Appelt house which still stands across Main Road from the Edwards
house, and which originally was the east wing, of the Italianate
house, "Eastholme", built by Isaac Edwards , father of George, Nathaniel
and Edward, c . 1850, on land owned by him. The land stretched from
Main Road north to Long Island Sound .
Mrs . Hale 's parents knew the last members of the Terry family
to live in the house . Terrys had owned this home since 1800. Two
elderly ladies, Miss Helen and Miss Maria , were the final Terry owners
in 1900. It is said that Miss Maria liked to sit in the bay window and
watch the world go by . . . and that Miss Helen sometimes was heard to
ask her: '"Who be that, Maria?"
Mrs . Hale says that Helen and Maria, in their wills, left the
Terry property to her grandfather, George Edwards, and his two brothers,
Nathaniel and Edward . The three men took claim in 1906, and eventually
divided the property, which stretched from the house which is now
called the Nathaniel Edwards house, across Main Road (with farm land )
going all the way to the bay. They divided this property between
themselves . George kept his father's Italianate-style house, and what
had been his father's land, running north to Long Island Sound . Part of
this property also extended south to the bay. Nathaniel lived iii ' the.
Nathaniel Edwards house; then known as the Terry house, and he kept
only that house and the land on which it is situated today. Edward built
and lived in what is today, 1987, known as the Adult Home, and he kept
some of the family land from the main road south to the bay.
Around 1930 Nathaniel left the Edwards house to his son, Charles
Edwards . Later in the 1930' s Mrs . Hale's cousin Pat (Patricia ) ,
granddaughter of Edward S . Edwards, and Pat 's husband David Gillispie,
owned the home. Thus the home was in the Edwards family for half a
century. It wassold to Helen Gilbert in the 1950's .
Back to the Edwards house : -- During Nathaniel Edward 's tenure he
added a bedroom to the northeast corner of the house. This wing has
since been removed.
Mrs. Hale says that there was a porch across the front of the
west house -- the Cape-Cod half-house -- and that it wrapped around
BACKGROUND OF EDWARDS HOUSE page 2 OR-27
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the west end of the home. She has a photograph of her mother and father on
their wedding day in 1916, and the wrap-around porch is visible in the
background. The porch was removed when Charley inherited the house c . 1930.
Later a porch was added to the west end of the house, which also has been
removed .
The Edwards are an old Orient family. They are recorded as having
arrived in East Hampton c . 1640, and came to the North Fork c . 1850. On
the other side of her family tree, Mrs . Dale 's grandfather was a whaling
captain, Edwin Peter Brown, whose family can be traced back to Richard
Brown, one of the first seven men to settle the Orient area in 1650.
Captain Brown's house can be seen on Main Road in Orient today, just across
the Street from the Candy Man store.
I
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by Phyllis Edwards Hale.
Terry/Edwrads House OR-27
Orient
THE EDWARDS HOUSE
Main Road at Edwards Lane, Orient, N .Y. 11957
.Analyzed by Ralph 1�Tilliams, John Stack and Gilliam Peters
Reported by Joy Bear
Novwmber 14, 1936
Southold Town Landmark Preservation Commission
INTRODUCTION
The Edwards house was built in the early 19th Century by one of the
several branches of the Terry family. The property on which the home stands
once stretched from Long Island Sound, across King ' s Highway (now Main
Road) and south to the bay. The house was located about half a mile east
of the village of Oyster Ponds (now Orient . )
The Edwards house might be considered two buildings - the West House
(1, 2 and 3 on the floorplan) and the East House (4, 5 and 6. ) They are
two different styles , the West House being a 1z story Colonial Half House
and the East House a simpler genre style .
The home ' s first owner was Jeremy Terry, who was born in the mid-to-
late 1700's . His seven children inherited the house and all lived in it
together during their lifetimes . The children were : Benjamin, b . c . 1806;
Emeline; Gabriel; David ; Helen, b . 1813, 4 .1905; Seth, b. 1816, d . 18975-
and
897;and Maria, b . 18243 d . 1904 . (See attached clipping, dated 1906. )
A will dated 1390 left the home to the Terry' s second cousins , who lived
next door - the three Edwards brothers - Edward, George and Nathaniel.
They took ownership in 1905-6. Charles Edwards took ownership c . 1930.
Pat and David Gillispie owned it in the 1930' s and Helen Gilbert in the 1950'
It is thought by some Orient citizens that the home was built
elsewhere and moved to the present site, and that perhaps the two sections
(the West House and the East House) were built at different times . However
evidence seems to indicate that the East and West Houses were built at the
same time, on this site . The pattern of the trim and molding on many doors
and windows indicate a c . 1840 date . Had the house been built much earlier,
some hand-hewn timbers would be expected . It seems, therefore, that the
house was built between 1820 and 1840. The Beers, Comstock & Cline map,
1873, shows the house and barn in their present locations . The eastern
part of room 6, the adjacent east porch and the bathroom to the north of
the porch are later additions , possibly 1890. The photo on the attached
clipping, dated 1906, shows no bay window .
FRONT ENTRANCE AND FOYER
The entrance (1) has a quiet charm. Side and top lights surround the
spacious front door, which has three horizontal panels raised almost to the
thickness of the door itself. These are enhanced by reversed quarter-round
edges . The molded trim on the inside of the front door is repeated in the
other doors and under the window of room 2.
Facing the Front door is a stairway and hall with access to other parts
of the house . The stairway has turned balusters and a highly detailed newel
EDWARDS HOUSE age 2
OR-27
post. At the second floor the balustrade has a graceful molded return, but
on the floor at the turn the mitered section joins loosely. The style of
the stairs, front door molding and the door under the stairway is
consistent - suggesting a construction c . 1820-40.
WEST HOUSE, ROOMS 2 AND 3
Room 2 seems to have been the original parlor of the house . There has
been re-trimming on the windows in rooms 2 and 3, including 20th Century
molding and bulls-eyes . Room 3, at the rear of the parlor, extends the full
width of the West House . Earlier use of this room remains unclear, as there
is no evidence on the walls or floor of attachments .
A central chimney adjacent to the stairs services three fireplaces --
those in rooms 2 and 3 and a third in an upstairs bedroom. The fireplaces
show substantial use in heating, but no indication of having been used for
cooking and no evidence of major repairs . The fireplace seems to have been
installed when the house was. built.
EAST HOUSE, ROOMS 14, 5 AND 6.
Room 4 may originally have served as the dining room. Rooms 4 and 6
share a central chimney which serves a fireplace in room 4 and a cooking
fireplace with an oven in room 6. Both fireplaces show major repairs, but
remarkably, the ashpit under the oven still has the bridging timbers which
form the top of the ashpit and carry the masonry for the oven floor. The
oven bricks are- fire-worn and indicate much use, probably in the mid-19th
Century.
Room 5 may originally have served as an unheated downstairs bedroom.
Walls in room 5, particularly the west wall, have horizontal paneling which
seems very early. Perhaps it even pre-dates the rest of the house . The boards
vary in width from 8" to 14 " and are beaded along one edge . They show
scrub-planing (jack-planing) and are the only pieces in the house that
reveal this method of finishing.
The wall boards under the windows on the north wall of Loom 5 and the
boards that form the wainscot on the south wall do not appear to have been
moved, and therefore point to an age earlier than the 18�4O's indicated by
molding in the rest of the house.
A much later renovation, perhaps c . 1890, enlarged room 6 a bit to the
east, and added a porch and bathroom on the east end of the house. A second
bathroom and pantry were made from the east and west ends of room 5 .
UPSTAIRS
North of the chimney in room 6 a narrow, turned staircase leads to
the attic over the house ' s east section. The floorboards here show extensive
use for storage . This attic seems to date back to the home ' s original
construction, c . 1820-40.
Over the West House, 1, P and 3, a large room runs east and west . It has
ample closets under the eaves which retain their ancient plaster and their
Southold Town Landmarks Preservation Commission, 11/14/86
EDWARDS HOUSE, page 3 0R-27
coat rails for hanging garments . These little upstairs rooms may well have
been used originally as tiny bedrooms - particularly the one adjacent to
the stairway, where an interior window admits light from the hall. The
west wall of the large upstairs bedroom is of two thicknesses - the
lower wall being 8" thick and above it the wall is 6" thick. This leaves a
decorative horizontal strip between, called a bull-nose shelf.
� In the attic over rooms ,5 and 6 the rafters are joined at the
ridges by half-laps . Under the West House, rooms 1, 2 and 3, the rafters
are secured with machine-made nails . Ridge angles of 300
are
Indicative of 19th Century construction.
CELLAR
A cellar extends the full depth of the house from front to back, under
the west halves of rooms 4 and 5 . The stone walls are pointed rather than
dry laid . Individual rocks show drill marks from being split at the quarry.
Other stones have rougher surfaces and irregular fit . The floor joists and
sills under the first floor that may be seen are all vertical-sawn. No
hand-hewn pieces are seen. There is also no evidence of circular sawing
on timbers in the basement, attic, or what could be seen in the walls .
THE BAY WINDOW
The large bay window adds an interesting accent to the house . It was
not seen in the_ accompanying photograph, dated 1906, so it is relatively
new .
Marks on the floor of the bay lead to interesting speculation. The
floor of room 4 is notched at the bay, and the bay' s floor is fitted into
the notch. The ends of the notches show the ghosts of a vertical trim that
indicates a door may have been here at one time, before the bay was built.
Since the 1906 photo shows a window here, was the floor here before or
after 1906? The width of the space between the floor ghosts is c . 72" --
nearly identical to the width of the front door of the West House, when
its modern trim is discounted . However, it is hard to believe that a mid-1800
house would have two ornate front doors, and even more difficult to believe
that today's front door would have been located in an auxiliary house,
especially when the handsome foyer of the West House is considered .
A third possibility is that the two houses were once separate
buildings . The difficulties with this idea are discussed later in
"MYSTERIES. " The most likely explanation is that a minor door once occupied
this space, and its size, but not its appearance, is indicated .
MYSTERIES
1 . One House Or Two?
There are no corner posts in the East House where it joins the West
House . The only attachment 'between these houses above the first floor seems
E to be provided by the exterior flashing and ceiling joists , where the two
Southold Town Landmarks Preservation Commission, 11/14/86
EIITMRDs HOUSE, page
OR-27
houses join, and no evidence of plates having been cut off. But the floor
joists in both houses are pocketed into a central 6" x 8" sill along the
east wall of the West House . Although the architecture of the two houses
is dissimilar, and it has been said that they were moved here from
elsewhere, the above evidence, along with the ridge joints in the rafters,
tend to indicate that the whole house was constructed at one time, on this
site .
2 . Bolts
Another feature that adds to the mystery of the house is the presence
of three major bolts and their square nuts in the front plate of the East
House . Do they aid in attaching the bay window to the house? The presence
of another bolt on the west end of the front plate of the West House
discounts this . Also, the bolts seem to be from a later date than the rest
of the house . 'Their function is not apparent in the present house .
Southold Town Landmarks Preservation commission, 11/14/86.
f
• - Terry/Edwards House
Orient OR-27
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Southold 'Town Landmarks Preservation Commission, 11/14/86.
'Terry/Edwards House OR-27
Orient
EDWARDS HOUSE OWNERS
- Jeremy Terry
BenJamin Emaline Gabriel David Helen Seth Maria Terry
Nathaniel Edwards
Charles Edwards
Patricia and David Gillis ie
Helen and John Gilbert
Rosemary and Ingo Scharrenbroich
Donald Brinkmann (1237'_
Southold Town Landmarks Preservation Commission, 11/14/86.