HomeMy WebLinkAboutHouses of Southold The First 350 yearsHOUSES OF SOUTHOLD
The First 350 Years
SOUTHOLD TOWN LANDMARK PRESERVATION COMMISSION
PLUM ISLAND
GREAT
GULL
ISLAND
HOUSES OF SOUTHOLD
The First 350 Years
Conceived and Produced by the
Landmark Preservation Commission
Illustrations Joy Bear
Text Nicholas Langhart
Research William Peters
Editing Ralph O. Williams
Chairman John A. Stack
Published by the Town of Southold, Southold, New York
Copy*ri6bt ~ 1990 b), the Town of Southold
ISBN 0-8488-0870-31
10987654~21
Fir~ F~litlon
Contents
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1Z
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3O.
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Southold Town Board
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Houses of the Seventeenth Century
The Old House
Terry-Mulford House
Doctor's House
Revolutionary Cottage
Houses of the Eighteenth Century
One Story Houses
Wlckham Farmhouse
Thomas Moore House
David Tuthill Farmstead
Fregift Wells House
Moses Case House
Joseph Horton House
Brown-Dean House
Harmon-Tuthill House
Two Story Houses
Terrywold
Osborne-Fleet House
The Old Place
Webb House
Houses of the Nineteenth Century
Georgian
Kane-Schneider House
Prelwitz House
Howell-Kujawski House
32.
33.
35.
36.
3Z
39.
4O.
41.
42.
43.
45.
46.
4Z
48.
49.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
5Z
58.
59.
6O.
61.
63.
65.
Aldrich House
Greek Revival
Holmes House
Townsend Manor
Gothic Revival
Universalist Church
Sacred Heart Church
Cox-Forman Carriage House
Cutchogue Library
Italianate
Ellsworth-Bond House
Jefferson House
Cupola House
Brecknock Hall
Victorian Era
Glenwood Hotel
Ellsworth-Tuthill House
Mo-Mo-Weta
Dart House
Houses of the Twentieth Century
Monroe S. Burr House
Ruch House
Townsend House
Summer Bungalow
Epilogue
Locations
Glossary
SOUTHOLD TOWN BOARD 1990
Supervisor Scott Louis Harris
Justice Raymond W. Edwards
Councilman George L. Penny IV
Councilwoman Ruth D. Oliva
Councilwoman Ellen M. Larsen
Councilman Thomas H. Wickham
Town Clerk Judith T. Terry
LANDMARK PRESERVATION COMMISSION
Chairman John A. Stack
Secretary Joy Bear
Member William Peters
Member Joseph L. Townsend, Jr.
Member Ralph O. Williams
SOUTHOLD TOWN BOARD 1987
Supervisor Francis J. Murphy
Justice Raymond W. Edwards
Councilman Paul Stoutenberg
Councilman James A. Schonderbare
Councilwoman Jean W. Cochran
Councilman George L. Penny IV
Town Clerk Judith T. Terry
Acknowledgements
Once the idea for a book about the
houses of Southold was conceived,
much help was needed to produce a formal
text. This help was forthcoming from many
sources, some as direct assistance and more
in the form of sincere encouragement.
The Southold Town Board sanctioned a
grant application to the New York State
Council on the Arts to write the book.
That partial funding was a great boost.
The town supplied additional funding to
make possible the readying of the material
for publication. We thank both agencies for
their hdp.
Choosing houses to illustrate the foot-
prints of Southold history was a series of
difflcuk decisions. Each of the houses that
was selected illustrates an important facet
of the architectural history of the Town.
Apologies are offered to those who would
have made different sdections. The many
worthy houses from which the selections
were made are listed in the Town's Survey
of Historic Houses and may be reviewed
in the local libraries.
Sincere thanks are extended to the many
individuals who assisted in the work: Peter
Stevens for his photography, Hungerford
Creative Services for their desk-top publish-
ing design, Larry Adams who made his
Macintosh available for editing, and all the
wonderful people of Southold who allowed
the Commission to examine their houses
and histories as part of the study.
Introduction
The Eastern end of Long Island traces
its colonial history to the early middle
of the 17th-century. Over the 350 years
since then, Southold's architectural heritage
has been remarkably protected from the
ravages of time and urban intrusion. For the
many admirers of the Town who welcome
the presence of the past, its isolation has
contributed meaningfully to the conserva-
tion of its physical artifacts, and especially
to the preservation of its buildings.
During the last part of the 20th-century,
the community has become actively inter-
ested in its origin as a 1640 colonial settle-
ment and its subsequent growth. Historical
societies have expanded their studies of
local development and have greatly
enhanced their teaching programs and their
exhibits. Artifacts and documents are being
made increasingly available in local muse-
ums and libraries. But some of the most
important artifacts are objects too large to
be shown in local museums. These are the
very homes and buildings that offered shel-
ter and comfort to the early settlers and to
the generations that made their homes in
the Town.
One of the results of the National
Bicentennial was the realization that
Southold's architectural heritage had to be
protected. To discover and document the
early buildings, a local Landmark
Preservation Commission was appointed in
1983. The Commission was charged with
the responsibility of establishinga
Southold Town Register of Historic
Structures and the examination and
recommendation of houses and structures
m be listed in that register.
During the course of that work, we, the
members of the commission, became
acutely aware of the history of the Town. In
our analysis and study, we found the
dwellings to be as dynamic as the people
who lived in them. We became fascinated
with the warmth of the houses and the
challenges of their dues and stories.
The Town of Southold on Long Island's
North Fork affords an interesting
opportunity to examine and portray local
domestic American architecture, ranging
from houses constructed in the colonial
style of Southold's settlement in 1640, to
homes built in the first part of the 20th
century.
Of the hundreds of examples that could
have been chosen for this book, 35 homes
and three churches were selected to show
the evolution of building forms and styles as
they occurred in Southold. Some have been
included because they are accurate and
nearly unchanged examples of their type or
style. Others were chosen because their
alterations were typical in showing how
times and tastes have changed. Still others
are presented because they are unique.
While Southold's history has endowed the
town with its special mix of buildings, the
local architecture does conform to the
period styles seen elsewhere in the country,
especially in the period after the
Revolutionary War. The houses are
presented chronologically according to their
styles. Generally accepted terminology is
used in the brief descriptions.
The domestic structures built in Southold
from its beginning to the Revolution
usually were plain and functional, the work
of thrifty farmers and seafarers who passed
their conservative building practices to
many generations, leaving only meager
clues to use in dating the colonial buildings.
All of the houses have been changed,
expanded and modernized through the
years so that positive identification of the
early work requires thorough examination
and study.
Generally, the early houses were small,
one-story structures, expanded in
succeeding generations to evolve into the
houses that are standing today. Often as we
followed the clues of the house, working
from the present larger structure, we found
the first form of the house hidden within.
Sometimes we found a pattern of timbers,
or an original foundation, or even a
remnant cellar. It was always a thrill to
examine a present house and find evidence
of an earlier structure inside. Where we
found evidence of an early building having
occupied the site of a present structure, and
having been incorporated in the later
construction, the date of the earlier building
is given along with the date for the building
which can be seen today.
When the Landmark Preservation Com-
mission, or another group, carefully
surveyed and documented a building, the
material offered herein reflects that data,
but this book does not report a detailed
study. Rather, it is a guidebook to
Southold's historical homes that has been
published by the Town to help irs citizens in
recognizing the quality and variety of their
local architectural legacy, and to encourage
the concern for and the preservation of this
unique and irreplaceable heritage, so that it
can be cared for and appreciated by the
present generarion and all those that follow.
Houses of the Seventeenth Century
P
DOCTOR'S HOUSE
OLD HOUSE
K Kitch,.n
P Pador
The earliest form of permanent housing
known in Southold is represented in
the four examples that follow. The form
was brought from the Connecticut and
Massachusetts colonies in the middle of the
17th-century, and was known to have been
built in England at the dose of the Middle
These houses were larger than those
built later, were based on a massive center
chimney and had high steep roofs. They
usually had unpainted exterior walls of dap-
board or shingles. Originally, the windows
were of the casement type (swinging out).
Their sashes were fitted with diamond-
paned glass set in lead, but only the Old
House, restored as a museum in 1940,
shows these today.
All of Southold's 17th-century houses,
standing today, were similar in form and
layout. Their arrangement had a centered
entrance on the main facade, leading to a
narrow staircase set in front of the chimney.
To the right was the parlor, (the largest
room), and to the left, the kitchen also
called the hall. There may have been smaller
rooms behind these. The second-floor
chambers (bedrooms) were similar in size
and shape to the rooms bdow.
The house was supported on large
stones situated under each post. The stones
were of glacial origin, found locally. They
were nesded in the soil with their tops set to
the common height of the frame of the
house. The cellar, if included under the
house, was small, stone lined, and not an
integral part of the foundation.
The heavy oak frame, hewn rather than
sawn, had interlocking joints secured with
pegs, and was exposed inside the rooms.
Summer beams wee used in the ceilings of
the main rooms to shorten and stiffen the
joists of the second floor. The edges of the
summer beams and joists were sometimes
decorated with chamfers. The floor joists,
and the floor boards fastened to them, were
exposed in these houses. Plaster was not
available until the end of the 17th centuty.
A large fireplace served each principal
room, with all feeding a common flue in
the central chimney. The kitchen fireplace
was the largest, perhaps as much as 8 feet
wide with a bake oven situated in the back
wall.
Finished detail in the house was sparse.
Only the Window and door facings were
trimmed. Interior walls were panelled with
planks, horizontal on the main walls of the
house and vertical on the walls that separat-
ed the rooms.
The characteristic placement of doors,
windows and chimneys, mark these houses
as belonging to the 17th-century. The pat-
tern is of three elements, for example, the
three upstairs windows that balance the
facade. In the next century, the Georgian
style predominated. The pattern changed to
five elements, again balanced across the
facade.
Large three bay houses were relatively
common in New England in the 17th-cen-
tury, but on Long Island, are found only in
the eastern towns. In Long Island's central
towns, much smaller houses predominated.
Southold's houses followed the small-house
trend. It has been surmised that the large,
almost manorial, two-story houses of the
17th-century were too costly to build, heat
and maintain and consequendy did not fit
into Long Island's early agricultural econo-
my.
The Old House
before 1649
perhaps the oldest building of English
heritage, still standing in the State of
New York, The Old Horue, restored to its
original appearance in 1940, is one of
America's best 17th-century houses. Its
important period characteristics include its
high, rectangular mass, surmounted by the
pilastered chimney, its clapboarded walls
and its restored doors and windows.
The house has only four rooms, two up
and two down, but they are of generous
proportions. Before the restoration, there
had been a lean-to on the back (north) side,
built slightly later than the main structure.
When the lean-to was removed to restore
the building to its first-period form, an
original casement window was discovered.
This window was duplicated m make the
restoration authentic. The old window is
encased and kept on display in the parlor.
The small window above the door is of
the same time and style as the large
windows, but is a restoration. Its purpose
was to admit light to the landing on the
stairs to the second floor. The placement of
this window was determined by its purpose
rather than the arrangement of the facade.
The roof of The Old House was very
steep, in part because construction using
heavy rafters and thatch required good
runoff for rain and melting snow, but also
because the enclosed space provided
sleeping spa~e for a large family. The rafters
were joined to the upper plate to prevent
spreading and the shingles or other roof
covering were terminated at the house line
with almost no overhang.
Terry-Mulford House
before 1672
This house, referred in some older his-
tories as Peakin's Tavern, is similar in
form and plan to The Old Home, but there
are important differences. First, the slightly
later lean-to wing has been preserved, giving
the house the typical "salt-box" profile asso-
ciated with houses of this age, particularly
in New England.
Second, the windows are not restored to
their earliest appearance; the 18th-century
sash remain but their irregular placement,
roughly where the original casements were,
indicates the 17th-century.
Third, this house was constructed in an
unusual way. While it has a heavy oak tim-
ber frame with precisely cut interlocking
joints, as do all buildings of its age, the
walls were not studded. Instead of studs to
carry clapboards (or shingles) on the outside
and lath and plaster on the inside, leaving a
hollow core, heavy planks formed the walls.
They were placed vertically from the sill
(the beam resting on the foundation) to the
girt (the beam that carries the second floor
joists) and from the girt to the upper plate
(the beam upon which the roof rafters rest).
The planks that made the walls were
nailed to the frame, and the exterior and
interior wall claddings were attached to
them. Because the walls were thinner than
those built with studs, the window frames
project out from the walls. Otherwise,
there is no apparent indication of plank
walls.
Doctor's House
c. 1700
This house began with a two-room plan,
parlor and hall, separated by a massive
center chimney. The chimney bay was
fronted with a steep staircase which rose m
the attic sleeping loft. At some later time,
the present second floor was added, replac-
ing the original attic and roof. This new liv-
ing area was used as a school in the early
1800s.
The present windows on the first floor are
probably 18th-century replacements of orig-
inal smaller sash. To the right of the front
door the windows are paired. The stud pat-
tern oftbe front wall suggests that the origi-
nal home had only a single window on that
side. It corresponded with the single win-
dow m the left of the door. The windows on
the second-floor date from the 19th century.
The house is nesded into the south face of a
small hill. The ground level on the north
side of the house is nearly up to the second
floor. The first floor wall on this side is
made of stone in the technique typical of
cellar walls. An explanation for the incom-
plete wooden construction is that the house
took advantage of the protection offered by
the hill against the winter winds. These fea-
tures provided security and convenience to
a pioneer family of the very early eighteenth
century. A fresh water creek originally ran
dose to the east side of the house. The con-
struction of the first floor, together with a
broad space to the east, and the path of the
stream suggest another explanation for the
first function of the building. Perhaps, its
original purpose was to function as a mill
and, at the same time, to provide a home
for the miller and his family.
The site of the house is another indication
of its great age. It faces an open area at
what was once a major crossroads. The
open area may have been a common at the
western edge of Southold. A mill at this
location would have been a center of early
commerce. Easy access to the water by way
of Jockey Creek would have broadened the
utility of the mill by enabling it to serve
more than its local area. Archeological
investigation of the underpinnings of the
house and of the surrounding area should
help to resolve the first function of this
building.
Revolutionary Cottage is a two-story
center-entrance, center-chimney
house. Its style is of the 17th-century rather
than later became it has only one window
on each side of the front door, instead of the
paired windows typical of the 18th-century
style, and only three second-story windows.
This facade pattern is termed "three-bay",
although, in this period "five-bay" indicat-
ing five upstairs windows, would be more
typical. The height of the frame and its one-
and-a-half-room depth are carryovers from
the 17th-century.
The present center chimney is a recent
restoration. An earlier chimney was
removed in 1917 when the house was
modified to make seashore apartments. Old
photographs show the earlier chimney,
which has now been nicely reproduced.
Other careful preservation includes saving
the marks on the main girts and leaving the
beaded chamfers exposed on the ceiling
joists.
The home was built by Richard Shaw as
part of the marine devdopment of the har-
bor at Oysterponds. It passed to James
Griffin, the father of Orient's historian,
Augustus Griffin.
Revolutionary Cottage
c. 1730
Houses of the Eighteenth Century
The 18th-centuty witnessed a surge of
real growth and prosperity in the
American Colonies, especially in the sea-
port cities of Boston, Newport, New York
and Philadelphia. The new architecture to
accompany this wealth and urbanism came
from the Italian renaissance through
England to the colonies. English architects
came here, but more important, were the
builder's guides and handbooks. The new
style was termed Georgian. Public buildings
- often of brick or stone - showed the new
designs to best advantage. In those build-
ings, dassical details were the key features.
These included doors and their strongly
molded facings, larger windows and frames,
cornices, and rigidly symmetrical facade
composition. Correct proportions in both
devation and floor plan were paramount.
Southold Town, during this period,
remained a largely agricultural and fishing
community and had little need for the large
public buildings that were appearing in the
cities. There was neither an abundant
source of stone nor a well devdoped brick-
making industry to provide basic structural
materials other than wood. Moreover, mor-
tar could only be made by the laborious
and fuel-intensive process of crushing and
burning oyster shells to produce lime.
Although the resulting product was
satisfactory for plastering interiors, it was
not durable enough to withstand severe
weathering when used as the mortar in
exterior walls. Therefore, wood frame
construction continued through the 18th-
century and beyond.
The Georgian style was formal, and
designs were drawn according to rules of
correct proportion, quite a contrast to the
rugged informality of 17th-century
buildings. While the high styles of London,
colonial seaport cities, or even the
Connecticut valley did not directly appear
in Southold, local builders did feel their
influence. They gave greater emphasis to
symmetrical and balanced facades, larger
double-hung sash windows with squared
panes, panelled doors (rather than battened
vertical boards) and often added a row of
glass lights above the main entrance door.
In the early 18th-century, two major
house forms appeared. These are the single-
story house and the full two-story classic
form. The single-story house was varied in
form depending on how the attic was to be
used. If more attic head room was needed a
knee-wall was incorporated in the front and
back walls of the house. This could increase
the roof height as much as three feet.
Sometimes small windows pierced the knee-
wal' The early single-story Georgian was a
building, two rooms wide separated by a
large chimney located directly behind the
centered entrance. The larger houses of this
style had either one long room or two
smaller areas across the rear.
The second 18th-century form of the
Georgian shared the same floor plan as the
single-story house but was two full stories
high. It was very dose, in appearance, to the
New England Georgian houses built
between 1720 and 1820. The differences
included the use of shingling instead of
clapboards, subordinate wings at the ends
instead of the rear, and only a little
decorative trim on the door and window
frames, The two-story Georgian became
such an architectural classic that it has been
reproduced from its inception in the 18th-
century to the present.
Long ago the Georgian was termed a
"whole house" because the "half-house",
just one front mom along side the entrance
and two rooms deep, was at least as popular,
Their one-story, three-bay form is actually a
single-story Georgian five-bay, with the
chimney set immediately behind the main
entrance, and built without two of the
bays. The facade presents an ornate door to
one side with a pair of windows filling the
remaining space.
In about 1760, another colonial house
form came to Southold. This was the two-
story "side-hall" house. It was built in all
parts of Long Island until the 1840s. It
came from New York and the northern pan
of New Jersey. Its coming to Southold
suggests that economic and cultural ties
with the west were strengthening while the
traffic with New England were declining.
The side-hall house, a variant of the half-
house, typically had large windows very
evenly spaced, an entrance often decorated
with top and side lights, and a larger cornice
at the roof line than was found on earlier
houses. Taller than the first of the half-
houses, these narrow buildings were
frequently built as additions to smaller,
earlier houses by extended families whose
need had far outgrown their previous home.
One-Story Houses
HALF HO USE
THOMAS MOORE HOUSE
MOSES CASE HOUSE
P Parlor
All along the north shore of Long
Island, lSth-century house building
was characterized by the vernacular
Georgian form: a single full-story with a
sharply peaked roof whose ridge ran parallel
to the street, a center entrance with two
windows on each side of the entrance, and a
center chimney. The predominant internal
arrangement of rooms was a parlor and a
chamber in the front and a long narrow
kitchen across the rear.
The local form was developed in
southern Massachussets where it is
called by the familiar term "Cape
Cod". It moved with the culture eastward
on the Cape, and westward to Rhode Island
and Connecticut, and to the eastern end of
Long Island.
This form of dwelling was among the
most efficient house types to build and
maintain, as its continued popularity
proves. The rather large attic provided for
early or later expansion since it could easily
accommodate several small sleeping cham-
bers.
Early vernacular Georgian houses in the
Town of Southold ranged from the very
large to the very small. The smaller of the
surviving houses, the half-house, was even
more economical than the full-house. From
their size, half-houses indicate that wealth
for constructing large houses was not uni-
venally available in the middle of the 18th-
century in $outhold. Frequently, the half-
house was built in stages, as the needs and
the prosperity of the family grew. Initially,
one half, including the entry and the chim-
ney, was constructed. Later, another room
was added on the other side of the chimney,
often with another entrance. The custom in
expanding the house was to repeat the
three-bay facade arrangement for additions
made to the left or to the right of the main
building. An addition to the rear was usual-
ly a lean-to.
Three chimney arrangements were used in
early Southold architecture: the center
chimney, the mid-bay chimney pair, and the
gable-end chimneys. The changes in
chimney arrangement present a page of liv-
ing history.
Massive chimneys were required in the
first houses to provide for safe cooking
while protecting the building from the rav-
ages of uncontrolled fire. The heat not used
for cooking was conserved by building the
house around the central chimney. The
Thomas Moore House has such an arrange-
ment.
With the development of brick making,
multiple fireplaces were built into the
increasingly efficient chimney stacks. The
increased availability of iron, and the
improvements in masonry techniques,
meant that fireplaces could be made smaller
and moved to more efficient locations, i.e.,
parlors and chambers. Equally important,
the center hall could be used to increase the
living space and provide significantly better
traffic patterns. Access to the second floor
was no longer limited by a ladder or a small,
narrow stairway. The chimneys in the
Moses Case House exemplify the construc-
tion of the distributed fireplace arrange-
ment.
The houses in this section span the 18th-
century and were selected, not only because
they share many details of form, construc-
tion, floor plan and decoration, but also
became each has been changed in the inter-
vening centuries. The alterations are sig-
nificnt because they are common to other
styles and, in giving their own dating evi-
dence, they help to understand the evolu-
tion of Southold's architectural history.
The Wickham Farmhouse
c. 74o
The Wickhanl Farmhouse, now situated
on the Village Green in Cutchogue, is
perhaps the most typical structure of its
type. Its balanced facade and centered
entrance with a simple row of transom win-
dows over the door are marks not only of
Georgian formality but also are unmistak-
able evidence of 18th-century construction.
The roofline is unaltered and the eaves
come right to the top of the main entrance
facing.
The floor plan is two rooms deep and the
attic floor contains several sleeping cham-
bers. The six-over-six light windows, the
long-exposure wall shingles and the unbro-
ken roof planes topped by the massive
chimney present an accurate picture of
colonial simplicity on Long Island.
The Thomas Moore House
1658-1750
-,"BI
Local tradition suggests that the Thomas
Moore house was standing in the mid-
17th-centuty, but no evidence of the early
work is seen today. Over the course of time,
all of the early houses in Southold have been
modified, expanded or othenvise substan-
tially changed. Although an earlier house or
an earlier version of this house may have
existed, this structure is of great interest
in its own right.
As in the Wickham Farmhouse, the fine
arrangement of doors and windows reveals a
clear local understanding of Georgian
design principles. The Moore house stands
a bit taller than the Wickham Farmhouse,
albeit with the same roof angle, typical of
this style. The front of the roof joins the
house at a higher point, well above the door
and window times. This extra height indi-
cates a higher ceiling in the first-floor
rooms. As a rule, the higher eaves tend to
represent later 18th-centuty work
The Southold Historical Society has
restored this house to irs late 18th-century
appearance, with the exception of the door,
which dates from the 1830s. Neither this
house nor the Wickham Farmhouse has an
exact construction date.
12.
David Tuthill Farmstead
1730- 1798
This one-story Georgian-style house has
been dated at 1730 and also at 1798.
The basic design was so commonly used in
18th-century Southold that these dates can
easily describe two stages in the home's life.
Only a detailed documentary and archeo-
architectural study will tell its story more
accurately than it is told by tradition.
This example of the locally interpreted
Georgian style is of interest became, while it
resembles the Wickham Farmhouse particu-
larly, it is clapboarded and has a more elabo-
rate interior. It is another very informative
picturization of the changes that prosperity
wrought on the dwellings of the families
who lived and farmed in Southold.
When, toward the end of the 19th-centu-
ry, the house with all of its interior rear-
rangements proved too small for its family,
another two-story structure was added to
the north. This building may have accom-
modated a part of the family, for example,
the next generation, or it may have been
used to house farm help. The style of the
addition differs from the original building,
particularly in the details of the roof, but it
does not detract from the overall appear-
ance of the house. Several interesting farm
buildings are preserved to the rear of the
main building.
Fregift Wells House
753
Local history indicates that the Fregift
, Wells House was first occupied in
1753. It is remarkably similar to the
Thomas Moore House in its proportions
and in its time. An interesting distinction is
the handsome entrance with six-pane side-
lights on either side of the door and the
large dassically inspired entablature above.
This and the white-painted cornice board at
the roofline probably were added in the
early-middle 18th-century, based on their
stylistic evidence.
The chimney, as it is seen from the out-
side, is another example of the changes that
were made to old homes as they housed
many generations of their families. The
original fireplaces were used for cooking
and heating and were burned out after, per-
haps, a century of use. In many houses, a
new chimney was built in the same location
but to a design that was current at the time
of the reconstruction. This usually resulted
in a smaller top stack and a change in its
proportions, as may be seen in this house.
Moses Case House
1747
The Moses Case House is literally a
traveller in Southold Town. It has
been situated in three different communi-
ties within the town limits. Along with sev-
eral relocations, extensive changes to the
exterior appearance and the interior layout
have been made to the house.
The exterior changes began c. 1840, when
the front door was replaced with a then-
fashionable sidelighted entrance, decorated
with delicate tracery over the panes. A
porch with a hipped roof and benches were
added to enhance and protect the new front
entrance. The roof cornice was widened in a
manner similar to the treatment of the eaves
on the Fregift-Wells house, and the end
gables were modified.
The major changes that were made to the
interior of the house were probably concur-
rent with adding the new entrance. The
original massive center chimney and its fire-
places were removed, along with the steep
front stairs. The chimney was replaced by
two lesser chimneys set in the right and left
bays, each fitted with two Rumford fire-
places, one facing front and one facing to
the rear.
Each of the new front fireplaces was cen-
tered in the rear wall of a front parlor. Each
of the rear fireplaces added heat and decora-
tion to the rear rooms, one on the west, the
other on the east where it was also used for
cooking and later to vent a stove.
Removing the original chimney and the
early stairs opened the middle of the house
for a center hallway that ran from the new
front entrance to the rear rooms. A gra-
cious, balustraded stairway was installed on
the east side of the hall to complement the
new entrance. Because of the extensive
chimney alterations, interior walls were
removed and much of the woodwork was
changed and updated to the then-current
Greek Revival style.
Joseph Horton House
c. 1750
The Joseph Horton House looks rela-
tively undisturbed in its location on
the Main Road in Southold. Many genera-
tions of this family have lived on this site
since 1653. This traditional one-story
Georgian, however, dates from the
middle 18thcentury, when it replaced a
much smaller, simpler farm dwelling. The
present house was built around a large cen-
ter chimney. The early chimney was
removed about 1840 and replaced with end
chimneys. This opened the center hall so
that an up-to-date single-run stair could be
installed. Very likely, the woodwork in the
hall and the dressed front door with its side-
lights were added when the hall was
changed. All of the changes are consistent
with the mid-19th-century date.
The moms in the back half of the house
were enlarged in the 1920s and a new (pre-
sent) chimney was built a little to the left of
the place where the original chimney had
been. This chimney extends through the
roof, but the two end chimneys no longer
appear in the roofline.
The front porch and its side benches are
difficult to date because of weathering and
repair, but probably they were added in the
early 19th-century. Some of the exterior
shingles are typically long and may have
been original. Shingles that have been
painted or otherwise protected sometimes
last for more than two centuries. If shingles
are exposed directly to the elements, howev-
er, their life seldom exceeds 75 years.
Dating Southold houses by their shingles,
with no detailed examination of the under
layers of the structure, usually is misleading.
The present front windows in the the
Joseph Horton house were changed to two-
over-two lights in the late 19th-century, but
the fi'ames are typical in size and position of
the mid-18th-century date of construction.
Brown-Dean House
c. 17G0
The Brown-Dean House has seen many
changes since it was built in the 18th-
century. There is internal evidence in the
house that indicates this building was to
have been expanded to the whole-house
form. The chimney was originally situated
directly behind the front door, with a nar-
row staircase set against it.
The parlor to the right of the main
entrance classifies this half-house as right-
handed. With the large front windows and
the southern exposure, the parlor must have
been a very comfortable room in the winter.
The kitchen occupied the entire width of
the house behind the parlor and the chim-
ney, where the cooking fireplace faced into
the cooking area. The narrow staircase gave
access to the attic which was probably used
as a single, large sleeping chamber.
The exterior was altered to its present
appearance about 1850 when the idea of
expanding the house to the whole-home
form was no longer in fashion. Instead, a
smaller wing and porch were added on the
left side. The original section was given a
new front door with Greek Revival side-
lights, the window sashes updated to four-
over-four-lights (popular in the 1850s) and
the front eaves raised about two and a half
feet and given a new cornice. The chimney
was replaced at the same time.
Aside from these changes, the overall
appearance of the Brown-Dean Home sur-
vives and shows what the very popular half-
house looked like in the late colonial peri-
od. Although this form was built as early as
1650 and as late as 1850, unaltered exam-
Harmon-Tuthill
c. 1800
The Harmon-Tuthill House, another of
the many half-houses in Southoid was
built near 1800. Its appearance is similar to
the Kane-Schneider and the Brown-Dean
houses but the arrangement of its facade is
left handed. The front windows
are to the left of the main entrance.
In about 1835, a small three bay wing was
added to the west (left) end by Amon
Tabor, who undertook a substantial redeco-
ration of the older section at that time,
especially focussing on the fine main
entrance.
The single-panel door with egg-and-dart
molding, taken from Greek Revival pattern
books, is framed by two prominent Ionic
columns. On the door jambs are two verti-
cal rows of carved rosettes. Above is a dou-
ble frieze with a leaded, cobalt-blue-colored,
glass transom, inside an entablature sup-
ported on two Doric pilasters.
The facade is finished with a denticulared
cornice, two nine-over-six light windows,
and clapboarding. The other sides of the
main building were shingled as in the Kane-
Schneider House. Tabor also endowed the
interior with new style trim and an excep-
tional fireplace mantd with Doric columns
and Greek key motiti.
18.
Two Story Houses
K 1~.~
D Dininff
P P~lor
WEBB HOUSE
P
wrhile Southold's favorite colonial
style seems to have been the one°
story Georgian house, two-story houses, ini-
tially modelled after New England types,
were also built. These show many of the
same features that were used in the one-
story houses: well-proportioned facades,
good-sized windows with small panes, and a
center chimney. They also show their Long
Island origins: long-exposure shingles, plain
exteriors, and many additions over time. In
the interior, framing timbers were visible,
including the summer beam running from
fireplace to end wall in the principal rooms.
In many examples, the walls were paneled
below the chair rail and plastered above.
Customarily, the ceilings of the front rooms
were also originally plastered.
By the middle of the 18th century, the
center-hall house was known in all the
colonies. The chimneys with their fireplaces
had been moved to the ends of the house.
In Southold, however, the center chimney
prevailed for several decades. While simple
isolation may be considered an explanation
for not using the end chimney style, anoth-
er reason is that the cooking area, with its
central fireplace, its oven, and the custom-
ary arrangement of the kitchen, took several
generations to modernize.
Terrywold
1684 & 1740
Terry ancestors settled in
Oysterponds, the first English name
of Orient, as early as 1672. In 1684, the
Terry family started the farm where
Terrywold is located. The farm was a strip
of land that ran from the 5ound to
Hallock's Bay. The farm was good, and
continues so m this day.
The east wing of the house was, most
likely, the part that was first built, as early as
1684. It was probably only a single room of
one story, expanded as the farm prospered.
In the mid-eighteenth century, the main
house, on the left, was constructed to pro-
vide the home necessary and proper for the
growing farm operations. The style and fin-
ishing represent the best of second-period
vernacular building. The generous size, (two
rooms deep), the carefully proportioned
facade, the Georgian-detailed center
entrance and the original twelve-over-eight
light windows made it one of Oysterponds'
great colonial houses.
In the nineteenth century, the large center
chimney that was the typical cooking and
heating means in the early house was
replaced with a smaller one. The new chim-
ney was moved a slightly from its original
location to provide room in the chimney
bay for a gracious stairway to the second
floor. At the same time, the roof eaves were
widened in the then prevailing fashion on
both the main house and the wing.
Virtually every old building in Sourhold
Town reflects the prosperity that came to
the area, probably stimulated by the growth
of maritime and agricultural commerce
and the arrival of the railroad in the mid-
nineteenth century. Stylish alterations and
fix-ups were undertaken everywhere, and
the changes at Tertywold were typical.
Osborne-Fleet House
c. 1770
At first glance, this house belongs to the
nineteenth century rather than the
eighteenth but, in fact, it has been much
changed. All the present roof trim, front
porch and doors, wall shingles and chimney
date from an 1850-1860 remodeling. As
built, however, this was one of the rare
colonial saltbox houses found on the north
shore.
The earliest two-story houses were built
one-room deep and had a lean-to portion
added to the north side a few years later,
usually to serve as a larger kitchen. At about
the time of the American Revolution, salt-
boxes were built with the lean-to integrated
into the original structure. The Osborne-
Fleet house, which was built shortly
before the American R~evolution, is repre-
sentative of the later type of saltbox. It was
constructed with a fully incorporated lean-
to, using rear rafters that ran'from the ridge
to the rear cave, two floors below.
Less than a century later, the second floor
of this house was made two rooms deep,
and a new roof, using parts of the old, was
erected over the whole. The cornices reflect
the new style rather than the colonial.
Some of the old, long, rafters were used in
the rebuilding and are still to be seen in the
attic.
Another change was made at about that
time. The original center chimney was
removed to open up the center hall. The
fireplaces in the two front rooms and the
kitchen were retained but they were altered
substantially to reduce their depth and to
provide new mid-19th-century chimney-
pieces of marble in the parlors. The fire-
places were moved into the walls of the hall
and a new omare stairway wa~ erected in
the place of the original stack. Three flues
were constructed, each in line with one of
the fireplaces, to pa~s through the second
floor. In the attic, these three were angled
toward their common center, the place
where the earlier stack had passed through
the roof.
The Old Place
1680 & 1815
Apparently this house was first occupied
~ by Joshua Wells in 1680 and by his
descendants until 1857, when it was moved
to this, irs third site.
Its appearance today, however, is the result
of a very thorough rebuilding in 1815 by
Joshua Fleet (marked by a datestone "1815"
at the top of the right chimney). There is
no colonial work in evidence, but the
Federal-eta craftsmanship is of a very high
order.
The most notable exterior features of its
style are the large and delicately carved front
door with siddighrs and transom separated
by four reeded pilasters, the large twelve-
over-twelve-light windows, and three gabled
dormers with round-headed upper sashes
and interlocking muntins. Less obvious are
the short-exposure shingles, often used in
the 19th-century and up to the present
time, the two separate chimneys, and the
gambrel roof with its four separate pitches.
The chimneys are centered in the rear
walls of the front rooms, providing fire-
places in both the front and the rear rooms
on both sides of the central hall. This
arrangement can be found in several houses
in Southold since it was used in the late
18th and early 19th centuries to avoid the
limitations of center chimney configura-
tions.
The gambrel roof, the chimneys, the win-
dows and the door all go to support the
1815 dating of the changes to the house.
But is it interesting to note that the basic
form of the house is Georgian, the perennial
favorite of the region.
The interior appointments are fine. The
mantels show excellent Federal-era carving
with fan and elliptical motifs. The door and
window frames show the best work of the
draw-plane artist. The windows are panelled
below the sash to the floor. The single-run
staircase has a carved open stringer support-
ing triple balusters on each tread. The balus-
ters carry a simple rounded handrail to a
heavy, turned newel post.
This house is a complete reference for
Federal designs, encased in a traditional,
vernacular-Georgian form.
Webb House
c. 1750
The Webb House was built as a two-
story, Georgian-style Inn about 1750.
The building was five bays wide, with two
ornate doors in the center of the facade, one
at each story. Supported by columns, the
roof extended beyond the facade m form a
porch. The columns also carried a second
floor, which thereby provided a two-story
porch on the front of the Inn. Two princi-
pal chimneys penetrated the ridge of the
roof, each centered about eight feet from its
side of the building.
A one-story ell was built at the back of the
main block to provide a summer kitchen.
Cooking was done at a large fireplace, with
an oven, and an embedded, open kettle,
built into a chimney at the rear wall of the
ell.
The Webb House was originally situated
on the west side of Winter Harbor (an old
name for Greenport), where Sterling Creek
flowed into Peconic Bay. It accommodated
the maritime traffic, for which Winter
Harbor was a terminus, until the early pa~
of the 19th century.
By 1820, harbor activities had expanded
westward, so the Inn was sold and moved,
by horse-drawn equipment, to Sterling
Village. There it served as a farm house
until it was moved again in 1955. This time
the structure, with its chimneys, was barged
down Sterling Creek and across the bay, to
its present location at the Oysterponds
Historical Society.
The internal plan of the Webb house
strongly supported its early use as an Inn.
On both the first- and second-floors, two
rooms flanked each side of the central hall.
Downstairs, the front room to the right was
a parlor and and the front room to the left
was a dining room. The rear rooms were
kitchens. Upstairs, all four rooms were bed-
chambers.
Most interesting was the placement of the
chimneys, between the front room and the
rear room, on each side of the house, where
they provided fireplaces in each room, a
total of eight. Fireplaces in all the bed-
chambers strongly indicated the Inn func-
tion, since ordinary homes did not usually
provide fireplace convenience in the lesser
chambers.
Houses of the Nineteenth Century
After the American Revolution, the
search for a new "national style," not
derived from England, and particularly not
Georgian, was begun by men like Jefferson,
Latrobe and Bullfinch. While most of the
concern was with the design of public
buildings, the new ideas changed domestic
architecture as well. There was a new
emphasis on plainer walls, less detail, and
greater use of classically inspired decoration
on mantelpieces and doorways. Cornices
received more trim. Most noticeable was the
introduction of the arch, circular and
elliptical, over doors, around windows, in
arcades, in gables and for fanlights. Brick
was used more than ever.
25.
But not in $outhold. The tradition of
wood shingles for walls and roofs
continued, as did the use of natural colors,
sparse decoration and relatively small size.
Long Island was devastated by the
Revolutionary War. Seven years of
occupation had driven most of the patriots
to temporary shelter in Connecticut and
their farms to ruin. Victory, in turn, drove
out the English. Their sympathizers, who
had maintained shipping fleets and the
commercial economy, were badly hurt. It
was years before construction of anything
but the most basic shelter could be
considered. Dams had to be rebuilt so that
mills could be reactivated before fine houses
were affordable.
When building did commence, it differed
only in details from colonial work because
the crafr tradition and apprentice training
perpetuated the old ways. Tradition was so
strong and resources so meager that no new
building form or style was introduced to
Southold in the first forty years after the
Revolution.
The changes to be noted, however,
include slightly lighter frames, still of hand-
hewn timber, joined and pegged. The use
of the summer beam was discontinued. All
studs, rafters and joists were sawn at a mill.
Nails were no longer hand hammered but
instead cut from flat sheets in a factory.
Because the heads were hand formed after
slicing the blanks, the finished nail, in
place, looks like its hand-made predecessor.
Lime for mortar had become generally
available, plastered walls replaced pandling,
and wood trim became broader and flatter
than before. Factory-made butt hinges,
secured with screws, replaced the common
strap hinges and their nails. Fireplaces
became smaller, and, responding to the
influence of Count Rumford's designs,
shallower. Mantels were often flanked with
decorative columns. Brick was used for the
visible portions of foundations, which were
extended under the whole house.
Dust stops, the little short strips of wood
running between the joists, under the seams
of the floorboards, were discontinued in
favor of machine-milled tongue-and-groove
flooring, which made them unnecessary.
Floor joists were set on-edge for greater
strength, and often in the cellar, the sleepers
were left natural (neither skinned nor
hewn). To level the floor, the upper surfaces
of the sleepers were flatted, usually by hand
with an adze. Wood lath, instead of being
split, was now made up at a mill in strips,
or sold in flat thin sheets, which were split
with the grain by the carpenter during
installation to create the gaps necessary for
plaster adhesion.
26.
Georgian
SIDE HALL HOUSE
K l~tchtn
So successful was the Georgian house
during Southold's 18th century that it
was still a strong influence in the 19th cen-
tun/. The influence was so strong, in fact,
that even today one can see Georgian-style
houses being built in Southold. With varia-
tions, it continues to be popular, efficient
and gracious.
Georgian-style houses were built in the
18th century in several popular variations.
These included one- and two-story whole-
and half-houses. All the variations were con-
tinued in the 19th century. Two of these
variations are the Kane-Schneider House,
whose form is a one-story half-house, and
the Prelwitz House, a two-story side-hall-
house.
Over the years, the long-lived Georgian
house was adaptable to the influences of the
times and changing ideas. The basic plan
provided all the living space needed by the
average family in an efficient and pleasing
arrangement. When a new house style came
into vogue, the earlier, basic house was read-
ily adaptable to ornamentation in the new
style.
Today in Southold, many Georgian houses
are garbed in later styles. Two houses that
illustrate Greek and Gothic Revival influ-
ences on the vernacular Georgian style are
the Howell-Kujawski-House and the Aldrich
House. Were one to look carefully at many
Southold houses, the basic elements of a
Georgian house might be discovered clothed
in later dress and hiding behind cherished
embdlishments.
Kane-Schneider House
1BIO
The Kane-Schneider House is one of
several in $outhold Town that date
from the federal era. In plan this house
resembles the Brown-Dean House. The east
wing (left) of the Kane-Schneider house was
added in 1850, when an expansion was
needed. Many other half-houses were modi-
fied in similar fashion as the needs of their
occupants grew.
The Kane-Schneider House possesses
great integrity; the changes over the years
have been few. The windows, the splendid
door, the chimney with its two fireplaces
and oven, and the floor plan are all original.
The main entrance, with sidelights and
transom lights, is the most dramatic evi-
dence that this is a house from the Federal
period, but more subtle is the presence of
higher eaves and the dapboard cladding in
the front. The back of the house and the
sides were shingled in the fashion of the
times. The purpose was to emphasize the
best features, which meant dressing-up the
facade, while making the unseen elements
utilitarian.
Interior woodwork is typical of the early
19th century, with a fine chimney-piece
with mantle surrounding the shallow fire-
place. The interior window treatment
indudes panels beneath the windows that
go to the baseboard, a high-style federal fea-
ture used only in the principal rooms.
Prelwitz House
c. 1814
High House Josh, named for its
builder, Joshua Livingston Wells is an
example of the two-story, three-bay, side-
hall home. Throughout this home, the style
is of the Federal era.
As with the Old Place and the Kane-
Schneider houses, a pre-Revolutionary
house-form was made contemporary by the
application of details that were current at
the time of construction. On Long Island,
the early decades of the 19th century were
the heyday of the three-bay, side-hall home.
This form was built in every hamlet from
east to west, but it is virtually unknown in
New England.
The Prelwitz House was a model of its
type, including the gambrel roof and the
subordinate wing to the right, which was
also given a gambrel roof. The portico sup-
ported by Roman columns, covered a wide
entrance with side lights. Its size required
the off-setting of the center bay to preserve
visual balance.
The house was moved to its present loca-
tion in 1912, at which time the present
chimneys were built on the outsides of the
end walls. The original chimney may have
been situated on the inside of the far wall,
or between the hall and parlor.
Charles Aldrich House
c. 1830
The Aldrich House presents a fairly typ-
ical appearance in rural Southold
although, at first look, it doesn't seem to
represent any clear style. It is not without
definite characteristics, however, and its
sequence of changes through the genera-
tions is instructive.
The basic form of the house is that of a
single-story Georgian, a style that could
have been built any time from the mid-
18th to the mid-19th centuries. The six-
over-six light windows on the right appear
to be original. The very high front eaves
suggest that it may have been a story-and-a-
half building rather than the more obvious
single-story form it presents. There may
have once been small second-floor windows
in a wide frieze directly above four first-
floor windows and the door. The front door
with its sidelights indicates the c. 1830 date.
Around the Civil War, the house was
stylistically updated by the addition of a
high gable placed over the front door, which
created a cross-gabled roof. The wide eaves
on either end of the building suggest that
the roof design was substantially changed
when the gable was added, perhaps to effect
better control of the roof drainage by the
use of the then-popular extended eave style.
Toward the end of the 19th century, the
two windows to the left of the front door
were replaced with a large bay window
topped by a hipped roof. The two-over-two
light sashes in the bay window point to a
date near the turn of the century. These
changes established a reduction in symme-
try and gave exterior evidence of the most
prominent room in the house, the parlor.
The house, with its changes, illustrates an
objective of Gothic and Victorian design, to
make the exterior details of a building
reflect its interior functions.
In the 1920s, the front porch with its flut-
ed, Doric columns was added. This
occurred in the Colonial Revival period,
when such posts were popular and therefore
easy to obtain. While the porch goes well
with the original front door, it is less com-
patible, artistically, with the Gothic updat-
ing applied in the middle of the last centu-
ty.
Greek Revival
K lqtch~
P Parlor
C Chamber
P
HOLMES HOUSE
Broken llne encloses
O.__Q_~lnal House
The Greek Revival was the first of a
series of romantic styles based on the
historical architecture of distant cultures.
The discovery, illustration and measure-
ment of Greek ruins in the late 18th centu-
ry excited the Western imagination.
Coupled with national sympathy and
enthusiasm for the Greek wars of in&pen-
dence against the Turks, Greek architecture
was seen to meet the need for an indepen-
dent American style.
The Greek temple form, a stone building
encircled with columns supporting a low
roof, would appear to be diffcult to adapt
to a cold dimate with a wood building tra-
dition that included few porches and many
windows. However, in areas of rapid expan-
sion such as New York State and the mid-
west, the Greek temple front, rendered in
wood and painted white, was built in large
numbers. The three-bay, side-hall house
plan was used with a gable placed over the
front facade. In the more classic representa-
tion, the roof was carried on freestanding
columns to form a portico.
With the growth of Long Island's villages
during this period, buildings of the Greek
Revival style appeared in such places as
Greenport and Sag Harbor where whaling
stimulated the economy and enriched the
culture. But, the more isolated areas also
were affected by the Greek influence.
Doorways, moldings, mantels and friezes
were ornamented in the new style. These
variations were learned from carpenters'
handbooks which were, in turn, copied
from expensive folios of measured drawings.
Construction techniques changed only
slowly during this period. Heavy timbers
were still hewn; only the lighter members
such as rafters, joists and lath were sawed at
a mill. The finishing of the wood used to
dress a house was also considered millwork
and became commercially available. No
longer did elements such as moldings, base-
boards, sashes, doors, and flooring have to
be hand made at the site of a house con-
struction. Square nails were factory made
and purchased by the barrel. Nevertheless,
erecting a house was very labor intensive
and required a housewright. Local master
builders, recognized for their design ability
as well as their craftsmanship, are known to
us for the first time: Amon Tabor and
William Cochrane worked and built in
Southold Town in 1830-1840.
The number of new structures built in the
Greek Revival period (and during the entire
Federal period) was not large, especially
away from the villages. This was not the
result of a lack of attractive styles, but
resulted from the generally difficult recovery
from the Revolution and the slow growth of
agriculture. The railroad and easier access to
the major markets in the west had not yet
brought new growth to rural Southold.
The Holmes House
845
The plan and the elevation, of this
house, taken from builders pattern
books is rare on the eastern end of Long
Island. The temple front, suggested by the
two pilasters, the two one-story columns
and the incomplete pediment were more
than sufficient to convey the Greek theme.
The flanking wings are original. Their wide
frieze unified the composkion of the entire
house.
The center section of the home was fur-
ther characterized by the recessed porch, the
enclosed windows and the main entrance.
The architectural arrangement was the
same as seen in the earlier two-story side-
entrance design and in the even earlier half-
house. The decorative sidelights of the
doorway indicate the time of the house's
construction, c. 1845.
The overall floor plan is unlike the tra-
ditional patterns that were of the same ped-
od in Southold. Earlier styles reflected the
presence of the house as a protection against
the difficulties of the climate and gave a
feeling of dosed living. This house suggests
the beginning of the era of more open liv-
ing. It was the precursor of much experi-
ment in the decades that followed, and
illustrates the effect of new influences on
Southold's traditional architecture.
Gothic Revival
FRAMING DIAGRAM
CUTCH OG UE LIBRARY
The Gothic Revival often is considered
to be the first of the many 19th-
century styles that are collectively called
Victorian. Like the Greek Revival, Gothic
was evocative of disrant places and times, in
this case, medieval England. It emphasized
style above function in building design, as
did the Greek Revival. However, while the
Greek influence reoriented the Georgian
rectangle from side-to-the-street m end-to-
the-street and added simple decoration, the
Gothic effect was a complex design of
intersecting roofs, towers, bays, porches,
carv',ngs and finials.
As the industrialization of the countty
grew, (and our hostility toward England
diminished), a yearning for an identifica-
tion with history developed. The Gothic
style offered another convention that was
still a part of the culture but did not directly
identify with the royal yoke. The Gothic
style was advocated for houses and churches
(centers of learning and morality) and was
considered "correct" for such uses.
With the Gothic style, (more accurately,
during the same period) came an emphasis
on landscaping and ornamental planting to
enhance the exterior attractiveness of the
home. Another social effect that developed
during this period was the establishment of
residential enclaves away from the work-
place. Few of these influences spoke to the
needs of the farmers and baymen of Eastetn
Long Island. Consequently, only touches of
the Gothic influence are found in Southold
Town.
While the Gothic influence usually is
considered as a style change, the improve-
ments in construction techniques that
developed during that time helped to make
its influence practical. The most important
of these improvements was the invention of
balloon framing. The new technique was
the use of light, sawed lumber assembled
into buildings without the use of the heavy
timbers needed in post-and-beam construc-
tion. The lighter, easily assembled framing
eliminated the need for housewrighrs and
the "raising" of main house frames, permit-
ting buildings m be effectively and quickly
constructed by less-skilled carpenters. The
absence of the heavy frame freed the house
from its need for a boxy shape, making
irregular arrangements of many wings and
levels possible.
More important, the lighter framing and
the the less rigid construction methods
made it practical for local carpenters to
interpret the style by following architec-
rurally accurate plans that were available in
builders' books. Another change that helped
to make the new style practical was the
introduction of the band saw. This made
cut-out' decorations inexpensive replace-
ments for the hand-carved pieces that had
been required earlier. Porches, fences,
barge-boards and trim were easily trans-
formed into stylized shapes based on the
patterns included in the latest builders'
manuals.
The use of shingles for dadding exterior
walls, remained an unshakeable Long Island
tradition, but the Gothic style was best ren-
dered in vertical board-and batten siding
(when it was impossible to use somber
stone). Sometimes dark-color shingles were
used, thereby producing a vernacular modi-
fication of the basic style. The white paint-
ed shingles and trim that were acceptable in
the Greek Revival style were replaced by a
varied palette of yellows, browns, greens
and reds that helped build the Gothic
mood. Even roofs carried out the color ide-
als with the introduction of slate, which was
shipped from Vermont on the new railroad.
The destructive effects of wind, water and
sun, as well as the repairs that were made
over the cenrury-and-a-half since the height
of the Gothic style, have softened the
remaining examples in Southold. Most of
the Gothic style trim has been replaced by
more traditional elements so the style is a
linle harder to observe today.
38.
First Universalist Church
1837
Wrilliam D. Cochrane came to
Southold in 1834 from New York
City to build the Cleveland-Charnews
House and stayed for many years. He
designed the First Universalist Church
which was completed in 1837. This land-
mark is an original blend of Greek Revival
and Gothic Revival and could be accurately
called Southold's first classically inspired
building.
'The shape of the structure, the pitch of
the roof, the corner pilasters and the color
are Greek Revival. But the building is also
the tint Gothic building because of its great
windows and many interior details. A major
emphasis in the Gothic Style was a feeling
of "up". This is sometimes described as
pointedness in the vertical sense, and the
windows in this church dearly illustrate this
effect. They carry the eye upward to the
interlaced muntin bars and the high cor-
nice. The front center window is notewor-
thy for its mixture of Gothic and Palladian
designs.
The tower of the church further empha-
sizes the Gothic influence in its design. It
offen an impression of medieval castle con-
struction with a suggestion of parapets and
flying banners. This building is noteworthy
for its condition. It has remained nearly
unaltered since its construction.
Sacred Heart Church
1878 '
The Church of the Sacred Heart is a
country chapel, constructed in the
Stick style, a loose rendering of the
medieval English building tradition. The
Stick style is characterized by patterned wall
surfaces (although not in this example) and
stickwork in the gables that suggests
structural elements. The six purlin ends
projecting through the front wall to support
the eaves emphasize the Gothic-style
concept of exposing the evidences of
structural support.
The walls of the church are dad in natural
wood shingles which blend nicely with the
streetscape while offering a suggestion of
the stone that was used in the medieval
construction. The pointed Gothic windows
and door, also early English elements,
reinforce the medieval character. The use of
the Stick style for the small country church
was promoted initially in the 1850s by the
Episcopalians, who based their views on the
rural English parish church with its stone
construction and steep thatched roof.
American congregations of other faiths
later adopted the style for country churches
because of its traditional appeal.
Cox-Forman Carriage House
c. 1880
This building, originally erected as a
carriage house a little more than 100
years ago, was converted to a residence in
1982. Although changes to the interior were
necessary to provide the conveniences of
modern living, the exterior detail was wall
restored and preserved. The building is
probably the best example of the Gothic
(Stick) style in Southold Town. Originally,
the large section contained stables and a
space for housing carriages. The far wing
was used as a residence for the driver.
Appropriate to a style with long English
roots, the wing is cross-gabled. Several
double, round-headed windows, in
individual dormers, bring light to the
second floor. Brackets support a wide
overhang with exposed stickwork over
vertical boarding. The designer also gave the
building a lofty spire to complete its highly
original design. These elements, together
with the dormers, offer a visible suggestion
of the structure of a building in the best
tradition of the Gothic style.
Cutchogue Library
1862
The Cutchogue Library is an excellent
example of how constructive reuse can
provide an active capability in a community
while preserving its architectural heritage.
The main building was originally erected
and used as a church. In 1987, it was exren-
sively modified to enchance its function as a
library. The history of the building illus-
trates the concepts of preservation and
building reuse.
At the time of the Civil War, the
Abolitionist members of the Cutchogue
Presbyterian Church were asked to leave.
They were offered land for a new church if
they could get it ready in one year.
Construction started in May of 1862 and
the church was dedicated that October.
The style of the building was typical of
churches in Southold in the middle of the
19th century. The Gothic influence is seen
in the windows and the spire, with the main
body of the church reflecting the earlier
Georgian tradition of the community.
The tower was built in three, nearly inde-
pendent stages. The lowest section was par-
tially supported on one of the roof trusses of
the main building (rear legs) and partially
by legs that went directly to the foundation
(front). The middle section was telescoped
into the bottom section and the spire was
telescoped into the middle section. Each
section could have been built much later
than the section on which it was carried
with no change to the earlier structure and
only minor modification of the exterior
detail.
In 1887, the congregation went back to
the first church. Although this building was
no longer used, it was maintained. In 1913,
the Society made the building available to
the Cutchogue Library Association who
turned it into a libra. Several yeah ago the
Association bought the building and
designed an extension. The compatible
architecture, the extended useful space, and
the protected early structure including the
tower show how the entire community ben-
efits from creative conservation.
Italianate
CUPOLA HOUSE
As the Greek-Revival style passed from
fashion the of
during decade the
1840s, it was not entirely supplanted by the
Gothic-Revival style. Another style, based
on the architecture of the Italian country
villa came into vogue. The houses, which
clearly reflect the Italianate style, were
characterized by a basically cubic shape,
covered by a nearly flat roof.
Vernacular Italianate houses had wide
overhanging eaves supported by carved
brackets, unadorned walls and large
windows with two-light, double-hung
sashes. Verandas ranged across the front,
with decorated, square posts, flat roofs and
bracketed cornices. The Italianate was used
for larger homes, often with bays, a tower,
paired windows and twinned chimneys.
On rural Long Island, and particularly in
Southold Town, the traditional heavy frame
continued to be used for houses and barns
well after the Civil War, but this did not
hinder the introduction of the Italianate
house. The new style called for a building
that was nearly square, and this was familiar
to local carpenters and housewrights from
their experience with the side-hall house
that had become traditional by the middle
of the 19th century.
During the period when the Italianate
became popular, stoves (and later, basement
furnaces) made fireplaces obsolete for
general home heating. This change in utility
contributed to irregular and expanded floor
plans and made the chimney an dement to
be hidden, rather than a major part of the
internal domestic design. It also freed the
siting of homes from the custom of using
southern exposure as a supplemental means
of heating in the winter.
The new interest in the Italianate style
coincided with agricultural prosperity on
the North Fork and with the increase in
commercial activity stimulated by the
arrival of the railroad through the Town to
Greenport. A substantial number of
Italianate dwellings were built both in the
hamlets and throughout the countryside.
44.
Ellsworth-Bond House
c. 1850
The Ellsworth-Bond House is a picture
of 19th-century agricultural prosperi-
ty. Set in a vast lawn and surrounded by
fields, its Italianate propriety is obvious.
The home was built high and square, with
the fiat roof carried on heavy brackets. The
pattern of the brackets and the eaves on the
main house was repeated in the right
(west) wing and on the porches that cov-
ered the first floor of each section. Between
the brackets, can still be seen, ornate,
molded panels, which are the best examples
of this art form in Southold Town.
Both parts of the home were three bays
wide. In the main block, the second-story
windows were predominant. They were
hooded and flanked with shutters, while
the windows of the wing's second-story
were set discretely between the roof brack-
ets, as if to conceal them. This was the ser-
vants' wing, with the kitchen and pantry
on the first floor.
The Ellsworth-Bond Home, and others
of this period placed greater emphasis on
setting and view than those of the previous
century when the sun, wind and general
cast of weather were the major determi-
nants for house positioning. This house
faces north for the view rather than south
to take advantage of the winter sun.
The Jefferson House
c. 1850
The Jefferson House was a three-bay
Italianate house with a subordinate
wing. It was a slightly smaller version of the
Ellsworth-Bond House but had its wing m
the left of the main block. The plan was,
othenvise, nearly the same. The windows,
though hooded, were the traditional six-
over-six light double-hung sash. The
entrance was well executed and traditional
for Southold Town.
Most interesting was the use of the slight-
ly gabled roof instead of the very flat hipped
roof that was characteristic of the classic
Italianate. The roof was set in the manner
of the late Georgian local style as it was
exemplified by the three-bay side-hall
house. Perhaps, to the builder of this house,
the new idea of the flat Italianate roof, used
only for the sake of style, seemed to be
inviting unnecessary difficulty. He there-
fore, may have compromised by building
the low-pitch gables and adding plenty of
brackets. The result does not detract from
the overall Italianate effect.
Cupola House
18 2
~~~ pogh Tri~ Detail
This example of the two-section, flat-
roofed, Italianate house was built by
the Vails, a fishing family in Orient. It was
added to the village street as the community
grew from the wharf toward King's
Highway in the middle of the 19th century.
The style was very similar to the other
Italianates built on large farm acreages in
Southold Town. Here, however, the detail
on the porch and the paired eaves-brackets
were made of very fine scroll-saw work
instead of the plainer decorations on other
Italianates.
The window sashes were four-over-four
lights with heavy vertical mundns, a design
frequently used in the 1860s for new and
remodelling work on Long Island. The
cupola was of the same style and construc-
tion often seen in Italianate houses. A story
sometimes given to explain the cupola is
that it was a wife's walk used to scan the sea
for her returning, mariner husband. In the
case of this house, the explanation could be
true, but in other examples, both in
Southold and in upper New York State, the
explanation fails since the water was
obscured by distance or intervening wood-
lands. A more likely explanation is the use
of the cupola for ventilation, particularly in
the summer when the sun-heated flat roof
made the ceilings of the upstairs rooms
uncomfortably warm.
It is said that Cupola House was original-
ly heated with seven stoves and that the
only fireplace was in the kitchen. This is
consistent with the progress in home heat-
ing made in the mid-19th century when
cast iron stoves became commonly avail-
able. The fencing and the landscaped yards
have been maintained by the succeeding
generations of the family m set the house in
its original style and beauty.
Brecknock Hall
1857
Built by David G. Floyd in 1857, this
mansion is remarkable for several
reasons. The sheer size of the structure and
its stone construction are unusual for
Southold Town in the 19th century, and the
style, while basically Italianate, is more
accurately eclectic.
Floyd was a wealthy whaling merchant
whose business was based in Mystic,
Connecticut. His roots, however, were on
Long Island and he determined to have a
stone house where none had ever been
built. Using Scottish stone curers to dress
the glacial rocks found on the large
pmperry, he built his stone house and had
it trimmed with sandstone from
Connecticut.
The design of the house incorporated the
bracketed eaves, cupola and porch that are
associated with the Italianate style. The
massing of the sections of the house,
together with the symmetry and the
stonework itsdf are elements of the French
Second-Empire style. The windows of the
center section are Romanesque. This great
house has been called "probably the most
splendid Italianare house of the period in
the county." There is no other like it in
Southold Town.
Interest in Gothic Revival never entirely
disappeared when the Italian and French
styles flourished in the middle of the 19th
century, but the British exhibit at the
American Centennial Fair in Philadelphia
in 1876 redirected architectural efforts
toward historic designs. The result was a
period of mixed styles, often in the same
building, termed eclectic. The principal
English-derived styles of the eclectic period
in the late 19th century were the high
Victorian Gothic, the Stick and the Queen
Anne. The general interest in architectural
styles expanded from concern for buildings
alone to include their settings, with
emphasis on gardens and horticulture.
From1870 tolg00 there were changes in
construction as wall as appearance. Balloon
framing was universally applied and a
variant, platform framing, replaced the
older post-and-beam techniques. The
availability of virtually every building
material in lumber yards removed the
necessity of timber shaping as part of the
construction of a building. The house-
wright disappeared, to be replaced by the
carpenter who often worked from plans
prepared by an architect.
Exotic materials, e.g., marble and tile for
fireplace openings and mantels, slate for
roofs, rare woods for floors, colored and
stained glass, plated metals for roofing, gas
light fixtures, porcelain plumbing £nctures
and all manner of hardware, were available
from specialized suppliers and were shipped
all over the country by railroad. These new
ways of implementing old needs freed
Victorian ,xrchirecture from the constraints
of utilitarian construction. No longer were
the finished houses the characteristic
signatures of their builders and the
traditional community. Instead they could
be shaped and finished as complex artistic
artifacts.
The major change for Southold in this
period was the arrival of the summer
residents from the New York City region by
way of the Long Island Rail Road. Initially
they vacationed in hotels or rented houses,
but soon began to build large estates for
summer occupancy. Often the estates were
given romantic or country names or
reflected their nearness to the local shores.
Some of these estate-owners practiced
farming but this activity was largely
conducted by regularly employed local
managers and workers who also provided
the necessary year-round maintenance of
buildings and grounds.
The newcomers brought the new,
fashionable building styles to Southold.
Because of their interest in scenic and
marine sites, they built their large summer
estates along the shorelines, especially on
the bluffs at Martituck. The presence of the
new styles had little impact on the villages
and farms on the east end of the North
Fork although they did influence the
architecture of the easternmost part of the
town, Fisher's Island.
50.
Glenwood Hotel
c. 1865
The Glenwood Hotel is one of the few
examples of French Second-Empire
architecture to be seen in Southold Town.
The Second-Empire style is recognized by
its mansard roof, which is really a steep-
sided attic or upper story, set above a
heavily bracketed cornice, covered with roof
cladding, and penetrated, in this house, by
three donners on the front and two on each
side.
A comparison with the roof treatment of
the Italianate style is interesting because the
ancestry of each style is epitomized in the
roofline. The Second-Empire suggests its
home to have been a French city in which
housing was costly. Because attics were
used as living rooms, the roof slopes were
forced into an extreme gambrel to provide
more space. The Italianate style suggests
open country where the summer sun
provided too much heat and had to be
barred by large eaves at the top of the
second story. The house was expanded
horizontally by adding wings and dis.
Second-Empire buildings were sym-
metrical in form and trim, usually
suggesting vertical alignment of windows
and dormers as well as an almost Georgian
horizontal arrangement of windows around
an ornate main entrance. The Second-
Empire style did not attain the popularity
of the Italianate style in Southold, perhaps
because it came late in the sweep of time,
bus more likely because it spoke of the city
and did not comfortably fit into the local
tradition.
The plan of the Glenwood Hotel includes
first-floor bay-windows, one on each side of
the building to insure balance, and a long
porch across the front. The roof is still
covered with the original slate, bus the early
wall cladding has been covered with
asbestos shingles, a product of the 20th
centu~, that traded low-cost maintenance
for style and was very popular for
replacement siding.
51.
Ellsworth-Tuthill House
c. 1865
This large, rambling house, set on a hill
overlooking Wolf Pit Lake, was
originally a smaller two-story house. Under
Tuthill's ownership, it was used as a cattle
farm. The early house was built about
1865. In 1890 it was greatly expanded and
brought up to the standards of that time.
The style is Queen Anne, an asymmetrical
design that often incorporated a round
tower, several porches, bay windows,
largeintersecting gables, and several
different types of wall surfaces, e.g.,
shingles, clapboards and decorative panels.
In the Queen Anne style, and especially in
this house, the carved detail was less used
than in the Gothic, Italianate, or Stick
styles. Usually, there were no highly
decorative roof brackets or sawn-out scroll
work.
Details, especially in the later examples of
the Queen Anne style, show revived
colonial designs such as sidelights at the
main entrance, pediments over windows,
colonial balustrades on porches, and six-
over-six light double-hung sashes.
In the Ellsworth-Tuthill House, the tower
is the dominant feature with a highly
irregular and unbalanced floor plan. The
porches add to the general impression of
the Queen Anne style but the siding does
not show the extensive artistic use of
decorative siding that other examples of this
style portray. As is often the case in the
vernacular interpretation of classic styles,
the features that appeal to the building's
owners are emphasized. In this house, a
long wing runs to the north (not visible in
the illustration) and terminates in another
tower.
MooMo-Weta
c. 1886
In the late part of the 19th century many
"summer cottages" were built on Long
Island by people whose main homes and
occupations were in New York City.
Southold and other east-end towns were
very desirable locations from the
standpoints of their beaches and their
climates but were less accessable than beach
communities in western Suffolk County.
Not many families were willing to travd the
100 miles from the city by train or boat
before the automobile made the trip
commonplace. Some people, especially
those who had roots on the East End,
became city-people but never lost their
home ties.
Mo-Mo-Weta was built by Frank Lupton,
a native of this end of the Island, who had
amassed a fortune in New York City
Publishing. It commands a fine view of
Peconic Bay. The house illustrates a
variation of the Queen Anne style, called
Early Tudor revival, which became popular
for suburban houses in the early 20th
century.
Like the earlier Stick style, the purpose of
the vertical, horizontal and diagonal
"beams" was to reveal the structural frame
of the house. Unlike the framing of the
early Tudor originals of the 15th century,
these dements are merely wood designs set
in stucco, instead of massive timbers infilled
with plaster.
Mo-Mo-Weta was designed as a group of
irregular blocks combined with many
porches and dormers to maximize its view.
Its asymmetry is emphasized by the gable
within a larger gable (on the right) and the
large bay window set in the middle of the
north wall that lights the main stair landing·
The house presents an irregular and
picturesque profile when viewed from any
angle, and thereby successfully achieves one
of the primary aesthetic objectives of the
Queen Anne style. It is a fine example of
Southold's architectural heritage.
Dart House
c. 1870
This house was built by J. G. Case, a
lawyer and Justice of the Peace. The
exterior is unaltered and well preserved. The
style is one of the variations of the later
Italianate, in that the roof brackets with
dentils and the cupola are incorporated in
the design. The roof is gabled and has a low
pitch reminiscent of the Greek Revival style,
from which this particular form derives.
The plan is that of a side-hall house which
was used in both the Greek and Italianate
styles. The large side wings, which carry
intersecting gables, were seen originally in
the Gothic Revival style.
The porch, a skillful product of the scroll
saw and the turner's lathe, wraps around
three sides of the house. It is highly
decorated, having a pierced frieze, square
chamfered columns, pierced balustrades,
and drops centered in the shallow arches
between the posts. Such design suggests the
incorporation of dements from many styles
because of their individual appeal to the
family who built and lived in the house.
Recent restoration, particularly the
painting, offers a strong suggestion of the
original house as it appeared to the viewers
of a century ago.
Houses of the Twentieth Century
Rld~e Line
K K~h~a
D D~i~g
P P~I~,
C Chamber
CROSS GABLE
Line
SUMMER BUNGALOW
D
BURT HOUSE
The continuing growth and
devdopment of Southold in the 20th
century demanded both replacement
housing and new construction. The
development of 20th century technology
gready altered and expanded the selection
of styles that could be incorporated in new
houses. Where styles based on European
influence had served to enlarge the
architecture of 19th century Southold,
technical advances in design and materials
became the controlling influences of the
20th century.
The palette of additional materials,
advanced building techniques and
unprecedented utilities made new styles
popular. These new styles were based on
domestic convenience. While the new styles
were not traditional, they did reflect the
social and economic condition of the Town
and the tastes and feelings of its citizens.
The new styles made efficient use of the
new building technologies: concrete blocks
for foundations, wide exterior sheathing
boards laid diagonally over the studs for
stiffer structuring and better insulation, and
in later houses, rocldath instead of wood
lath for the interior plaster wall
construction. Millwork for finishing was
specified from a catalogue.
Standardized plans for houses of the Four-
Square, Cross-Gable and other styles could
be obtained for a few dollars from
magazines that published them. Local
lumber yards could provide all the building
materials, cut-to-size and ready to erect.
E.W. Howell's lumber company in
Brentwood provided this service all over
Long Island.
These houses, commodious and relatively
inexpensive because of the economies of
standardization, were often chosen when
additional or replacement housing was
needed on Southold's farms. They are easy
to see on the main roads, standing alone
and surrounded by fidds. They are also to
be found in the several Southold villages
where they stand with contemporary styles
in the parts of the communities that were
built between the turn of the century and
1920.
Monroe S. Burt House
1906
The style of the Monroe S. Butt home
is called four-square. It is one of the
very few styles that are distinctly American
in origin. The vernacular forms seen in
Southold and many other areas were derived
from the highly original work of Frank
Lloyd Wright in Chicago beginning in the
1890s. They were popularized throughout
the country by pattern books and builders
magazines. Most of the houses of this style
were built between 1905 and 1915. The
four-square faded from fashion shortly after
World War I.
These houses were characterized by a dis-
tinctly cubical shape, capped by a low-
pitched, hipped roof with wide over-hang-
ing eaves. They were usually two-story
buildings with one-story wings or porches
supported on heavy posts. The windows
were symmetrically placed and usually
made up of square single-light sashes.
Sometimes dormers, also hipped, projected
from the main roof.
The front door was often elaborated but
not to the degree of having side-lights. It
was usually placed to one side in an
arrangement similar to that of the side-hall
house and opened into an undifferentiated
hall that formed one end of the living
room. Directly behind the door, a stairway
landing formed an entry with the hall. In
the rear of the house, usually directly back
from the front door, was the kitchen. On
the other side of the rear section, most
houses of this style offered a dining room
that could also be entered from the living
room.
The construction of the Burr House tells
much about house-building at the begin-
ning of the 20th century. The availability of
sized lumber and millwork, improved
masonry, fasteners, finishing and utilities
(plumbing, heating and in some parts of
the Town, electricity) made it practical for a
builder to sit down with a potential owner
and design a practical, up-to-date, hand-
some house.
Ruch House
before 1897
The Ruch House was originally built
just before the turn of 20th century. It
was remodelled to its present form in the
early 1920s, when it was given the character
of a four-square. At that time, the low hip
roof was built and the entire house was
shingled. A wrap-around porch on the front
of the house was replaced by the present
The four-square style usually is cubic in
form but this house is more rectangular.
The porches on either end emphasize the
horizontal effect. The interesting feature that
this house illustrates, is the change from the
Georgian style, characterized by the five-bay
symmetry and the heavy horizontal feeling,
into the four-square impression, given by
the hip roof and the shingles. The Ruch
House has not been further altered, except
for convenience modernizations, since the
1920s. It enhances the dignified heritage of
Southold Town.
58.
Townsend House
1905
The Townsend House is a fine example
of a style, called Cross-Gable, that
developed in Southold Town at the begin-
ning of the 20th Century. Its form tells an
interesting story of its architectural history.
The main block is a three-bay side-hall
house whose beginnings date to the late
18th century. The roof pitch echoes mid-
19th century Gothic influence while the
cross-gables (for which the style is named)
reflect the vernacular Queen Anne style of
the late 19th century.
The form of the Townsend House also
tells about the history of domestic life in
Southold in the 19th century. Because fire-
place cooking and heating were made obso-
lete by cast-iron stoves, and plumbing
brought running water indoors, the form of
the kitchen changed. In the Cross-Gable
style, a whole section of the house was pro-
vided for household services. Its form was
similar m the main block but it was a little
smaller in width, length and height.
Upstairs in the service block, rooms were
provided for domestic servants.
Bed chambers occupied the second story
of the main block of the house. When
additional chambers were required by the
family who was having a Cross -Gable
house constructed, the wings were designed
to accomodate the requirements. The
choices were almost modular.' one wing or
two, large wings (12 feet), or small (4 feet),
bay-windows in the ends or not, one- or
two-story, cellars and attics or not. The
enclosed space was flexible so the house
appealed strongly to a wide segment of
Southold's families.
The basic house was standard, and was
pictured and drawn in a builder's design
book. The variations were easy to visualize
and select, The costs for basic choices and
for the variations that individualized the
house, could be quickly evaluated from the
accompanying material lists. Local lumber
yards, or the builders themselves kept the
structural materials and millwork in stock.
In looking for the the Cross-Gable house
style in Southold Town, the observer may
find it interesting to count the number of
variations that survive to enrich the heritage
of our Town.
Summer Bungalow
By the beginning of the 20th century,
Long Island had become a popular
summer resort for New York. Peconic Bay
was an excellent place for summer vacation,
especially for city families with several chil-
dren. Families came to their summer homes
as soon as school was out. Usually, father
established the family and enjoyed a short
vacation at the beginning of the season. He
then returned to the city and commuted by
train on weekends.
After the first World War, the motor car
grew in popularity. With the family car
available at the summer home, the family
was no longer limited by proximity to
stores. Summer families soon outnnum-
bered the winter population.
New summer residents called for new con-
struction, and a new house style. The new
style was the Bungalow. It was a particular
example of the Craftsman style that
emerged at the turn of the 20th century.
Although the Bungalow was first built in
California, it rapidly swept across the coun-
try, popularized by architectural journals
and home magazines.
The Summer Bungalow was front-gabled,
or more commonly, side-gabled. It usually
had only one-story but used a large dormer
to add the upstairs sleeping accommoda-
tions. There was always a large screened
porch and sometimes a fireplace for the cool
days of early and late summer.
The early Bungalows were built in
Southold before commercial electric service
was available. Water was pumped by hand
and cooking was done on kerosene or coal
stoves. As electricity and gas became avail-
able, summer living could be as convenient
and comfortable as life in the city.
Many Summer Bungalows have been win-
terized. Set on foundations or cellars and
insulated they became year-round homes.
Often the improvements were made by sec-
ond generation owners who retired to
Southold, thereby recapturing the fond
memories of their early summers.
Epilogue
As the Commission tried to understand
Southold's houses and how they fit in
the flow of time, we sometimes ran into
more questions than answers about tradi-
tional local history, and the details of early
house construction. Nevertheless, we start-
ed our studies of Southold houses using the
history as our guide. Usually, but not
always, the houses mirrored the traditional
stories.
Generally, the early houses were small,
one-story structures, expanded in succeed-
ing generations to evolve into the houses
that are standing today. While earlier houses
tended to be small, not every examination
of the older buildings revealed this tradi-
tional pattern. The two houses in the town
that appear to be the oldest: the Terry-
Mulford House in Orient, and The Old
House in Cutchogue, are large, two-story,
center-chimney, Medieval-Colonial style
structures with no evidence of a smaller unit
to be found within either building, despite
extensive physical examinations. We could
not illuminate these first-period buildings
with the light of traditional history.
The traditional picture offered by
Southold Town history is that in
September, 1640, Pastor Youngs came to
Southold with his group of settlers. They
crossed the Sound from New Haven to start
a church-oriented colony. Regrettably, no
historical information that indicates the
economic situation of the first decade of the
colony, is available to answer the questions
that these two early houses ask. Did this
small group have the manpower necessary
to fell and saw the timber, complete the
joinery, and then erect these unusually large
buildings, one documented to have existed
less than 10 years after the original landing?
Or did they bring with them the wealth
that paid for these constructions?
The histories of contemporary colonies
show that survival was the primary concern
during the first years of settlement. The
needs were for immediate food production
and for minimal, rapidly erected, shelter.
Aside from the two structures here identi-
fied, the local architectural evidence indi-
cates that Southold's development was
entirely traditional.
A further question arises: Why would the
first settlers arrive in September, thereby
facing a hostile fall and winter at the very
start of their settlement? Could it be that in
the previous year or two they had come
over from New Haven, a trip of only 40
miles by way of the Sound, to lay the
groundwork for their setdement, induding
erecting permanent shelters and planting
crops? In that way, they could have harvest-
ed a crop for that first fall and would have
been prepared to face the winter.
The available history of the town does
not indicate hardship that first winter, per-
haps showing the effectiveness of their plan-
ning. Other history indicates that early peo-
ple, perhaps traders, were familiar with the
North Fork well before 1640, for instance,
at Arshmomoque. The area would have
been known to potential settlers. However,
neither pre-settlement preparation nor trad-
ing offers a direct reason for the two very
large first-period buildings.
Research into another aspect of Long
Island history has offered a possible expla-
nation. Studies of the forestation of the east
coast of North America show that before
the discovery of the new world, Eastern
Long Island was covered by a forest of
mature white oak. This is reflected in the
construction of these two early buildings.
White oak was their predominant struc-
tural material. Extensive investigation of
Southold's still-standing houses reveals that
early in the 18th-century red oak and chest-
nut replaced white oak for use in the major
structural members e.g., girts and summer
beams. Posts appear to be the last members
in which red replaced white oak.
The use of red oak, although white would
have been the preferred building material,
suggests deforestation of the white oak.
Since mature red oak was used for major
structural timbers early in the 18th-century,
the white oak must have been well on the
way to depletion in the 17th-century. The
first several generations of early settlers
could not have depleted the mature white
oak before 1700; not nearly enough early
houses were built in the colony to have used
even a minor portion of the total forest.
Other uses are indicated but traditional his-
tory stands silent on what happened to the
oak.
White oak was the best American timber
for building ships. However, the depletion
of the white oak cannot be easily attributed
to its use in local shipbuilding, since that
industry did not develop in Southold until
the middle ofthelSth century. Could the
oak have been felled, sawed and transported
back to England for use in shipyards strug-
gling to build the vessels for England's furl-
ous trade expansion? If so, the timber might
well have been harvested early in the 17th
century (or even in the late 16th-century),
well before or independent of the colonial
set-dement.
While Southold's history does not speak
of very early commerce, other colonies
established a thriving trade in the manufac-
ture and shipment of pipe staves to make
barrels in the West Indies in the period
shortly before the time of Southold's settle-
ment. The best barrel material for sugar,
molasses, and rum was white oak. The first
American forests to be harvested were those
with easiest access to water transport.
Southold's forests were no farther than
four miles from the shore of the Sound
where large vessels could find convenient
anchorage. Were our forests taken for ships
and barrels? Pethaps the two apparently old-
est buildings were erected for, and first used
as, shelters for the crews that felled and pre-
pared the oak for shipment.
The questions that have been raised here
are not answered in the recorded history of
the Town, nor in the survey of existing
houses portrayed in this book. Pursuing
answers to these questions is the mandate
that we, the members of the Landmark
Preservation Commission will continue to
follow as we search out and document the
architeerural history of Southold.
Locations
1. The Old House
Cutchogue Village Green
2. Terry - Mulford House
Orient, N side, Rt.25
1.6 mi E of Monument
3. Doctor's House
Southold, E Side, Akerly Pond Lane
0.1 mi. N of Rt. 25
4. Revolutionary Cottage
Orient, W side, Village Lane
0.4 mi. S of Monument
5. Wickham Farm House
Cutchogue Village Green
6. Thomas Moore House
Southold, Southold Historical Society
7. David Tuthill Farmstead
Cutchogue, E side, New Suffolk Lane
0.3 mi. S of Rt. 25
Fregiff Wells House
Southold, E side, Main Bay View
opposite Grange Rd.
9. Moses Case House
Southold, S. side, Rt. 48
0.2 mi. E ofyoungs Ave.
10. Joseph Horton House
Southold, N side, Rt. 25
0.3 mi. E of Akerly Pond Lane
11. Kane - Schneider House
East Marion
S E corner, Rt. 25 & Gillete Dr.
12. Brown - Dean House
East Marion, N side, Rt. 25
0.2 mi. E of Rocky Pt. Rd.
13. Harmon - Tuthill Home
East Marion, N side, Rt. 25
0.3 mi. E of Prat Office
14. Terrywold
Orient, N side, Rt.. 25
2.65 mi. E of Monument
15. Osborne - Fleet House
Cutchogue
NW corner, Rt. 25 & Highland Rd.
16. The Old Place
Cutchogue, E side, New Suffolk Lane
0.1 mi. S of Rt. 25
17. Webb House
Orient, Oystetponds Historical Society
18. Prelwitz House
Peconic, W side, Indian Neck Lane
opposite Spring Lane
19. Howell - Kujawski House
Mattituck, N side, Sound Ave.
First house E of Town line
20. Aldrich House
Mattituck, N side, Sound Ave.
opposite Aldrich Lane
21. Holmes House
Orient, E side, Village Lane
opposke Post Office
22. Townsend Manor
Grecnport, E side, Main St,
23. Universalist Church
Southold, S side, Rt. 25
opposke Tucker's Lane
24. Sacred Heart Church
Cutchogue, NW corner Rt. 25 &
GrifFin Lane
25. Cutchogue Library
Cutchogue Village Green
26.
Cox - Forman Carriage House
Mattituck, Breakwater Rd.
0.05 mi N of Cox Lane
27.
Ellsworth - Bond House
Mattituck, S side, Oregon Rd.
0.3 mi E of Mill Lane
28. Jefferson House
Peconic, W side, Peconic Lane
opposite Carroll Ave.
29. Cupola House
Orient, E side, Village Lane
Next N of Historical Society
30. Brecknock Hall
Greenport, N side, Rt. 25
0.2 mi E of Bailey Ave.
31. Glenwood Hotd
Mattituck, N side, Rt. 25
4th building E of Love Lane
32. Ellsworth ~ Tuthill House
Mattituck, N side, Wickham Ave.
at Wolf Pit Lake
33. Mo - Mo - Weta
Mattituck
Private Rd. W of airport
Dart Home
Peconic, E side, Peconic Lane
0.05 mi S of Rt. 48
35. Monroe S. Burr House
Greenport, N side, Rt. 48
0.15 mi E of Moore's Lane
36. Ruch House
Southold, Corner Rt. 48 & Ruch Lane
37. Townsend House
Grecnport, NE corner Main St. & Monsell
38. Summer Bungalow
Laurel, S side Peconic Bay Blvd.
· 1 mi W of Bray Ave.
Glossary
covering outer walls, laid horizontally, over-
lapping.
eui~..a~ light structure on a roof.
darn~r...A vertical window in a projection
built out from a sloping roof.
draft s~o/~...A short flat piece of wood set in
from joist to joist forming a seal where floor
board sides join.
d~t sto/z..See draft stop.
entab/at~ere...The superstructure carried by
the columns or pilasters of a door.
bay...Any of a number of similar major
vertical divisions of a building containing a
door or window. (ex. A 5 bay may consist
of a center door with two discrete windows
on each side.)
gadding... Exterior covering of a building.
(ex. shingle, brick)
elapboan[.. A long thin board thicker
along one edge than along the other used in
gabl~....The portion of the front or side of a
building enclosed by masking the end of a
pitched roof.
garabrel..A gable roof, each side of which
has a shallower slope above a steeper slope/
A Mansard roof is a particular gambrd
where the upper roof appears flat when
viewed from ground level.
Georglan...A formal and symmetrical house
constructed following strict rules of correct
proportion. (ex~ A one or two story house
with a center entrance and two windows
balanced on each side.)
~/rt...A timber connecting main posts at a
floor above the ground floor.
Goth/e Re~va~..A style of architecture
characterized by the use of the pointed arch
in doors and windows.
Gr~ek Ra~val,..A style of architecture
characterized by an imitation of ancient
Greek designs and ornamental motifs.
ha~-homt...A three bay home with the
door bay on the left or right.
ltM!ana.~..ak style of architecture based on
Romanesque vernacular residential architec-
ture of the Italian countryside characterized
by the use of the rounded arch and flat or
very low slope roof.
joiat...One of many parallel beams of tim-
ber for supporting floors and ceilings.
/ath...Thin strips of wood forming a
backing for plaster or nailer for shingles.
~a~-t~..aSm extension with a single pitch
roof with the higher end abutting a larger
building.
la'gh~..Panes of glass in a window. (mc win
dow or door surround)
MamanL..See gambrel.
muntin...ftame member between panes of
glass in window sash
p/att...The mp girt which carries the com-
mon r~ers.
purlim..A beam framed between the princi-
pal rafters on each side of a roof to carry
the common rafters or simple vertical
boarding.
rafl~r...tmy of a series of timbers usually
having measured slope, for supporting the
sheathing and covering of a roof.
Roma~sq~e..ast style of architecture char-
acterized by heavy construction (mu,ally
masonry) with narrow openings, round
arches, and vaulting ceilings.
Rum~r~.a~ shallow fireplace with con-
verging sidewalls designed by Count
Rumford (1753 - 1814).
S~eond Fanpir~..A style of archchitecture
of the Victorian Era characterized by a
Mansard roof.
ddng~...One of many thin pieces of wood
laid vertically in overlapping rows to cover
the sides and walls of a house.
d/L.a horizontal timber serving as the
foundation of a wall, window, or door.
s~..A heavy horizontal timber for dis-
tributing loads.
Stkk Styl~..A style of architecture charac-
terized by paxterned wall surfaces and stick-
work in the gables.
a~wiag~r..ak long horizontal timber connect-
ing upright posts.
mun..Any of a number of upright members
of wood forming the frame of a wall or par-
ration.
~m,,r &~am~.~A heavy beam crossing the
ceiling of a room from girt m girt carrying
the joists of the floor above.
tra~m...A crosspiece separating a door
from a window or fanlight above it.
Viet~r/am £rat..A period of architecture
characterized by the presence of ostenta-
tious ornamentation.