Architecture
25 buildings you can stand in front of, by 15 named architects — a 1649 timber frame, whale money spent on Greek temples, and a museum that is quoting a potato barn.
- Colonial frames
- Whaling money
- Lighthouses
- Resort era
- Modern
- Contemporary
Colonial frames
Heavy timber frames raised by carpenters, not architects — the first English building on Long Island.
Edward Howell
Water Mill Museum
Water Mill · 1644 · Water-powered grist mill
Edward Howell's 1644 grist mill — the water-powered mill that gave the hamlet its name — still grinding grain on its original stones on open days.
Architect not recorded
The Old House, Cutchogue
Cutchogue · 1649 · First-period English timber frame
Begun in 1649 and moved to the Village Green in 1660 — hall-and-parlor plan around a massive central chimney, among the oldest English frame houses in New York.
Architect not recorded
Miss Amelia's Cottage
Amagansett · 1725 · Colonial
A one-and-a-half-story Colonial cottage raised in 1725 — the National Register lists no architect, correctly: Amagansett's early houses were carpenter-built, not designed.
Architect not recorded
Havens House Museum
Shelter Island · 1743 · Colonial farmhouse
James Havens' 1743 farmhouse — the National Register lists no architectural style and no architect, which is right: this is carpenter-built vernacular, not a designed building.
Architect not recorded
Clinton Academy
East Hampton · 1784 · Georgian
New York's first chartered academy: a gambrel-roofed Georgian hall of brick and shingle, built 1784 on East Hampton's Main Street.
Nathaniel Dominy
Old Hook Mill
East Hampton · 1806 · Smock windmill
Nathaniel Dominy raised this smock windmill in 1806, one of eleven Long Island windmills still standing; the sails still turn on wind days.
Samuel Schellinger
Wainscott Windmill
Wainscott · 1813 · Smock windmill
Millwright Samuel Schellinger built this smock windmill in 1813 on what are now the Georgica Association grounds — not a Dominy mill, despite the family building most of its East Hampton neighbors.
- Exterior only
Pardon T. Tabor
Beebe Windmill, Bridgehampton
Bridgehampton · 1820 · Smock windmill
Pardon T. Tabor built this smock windmill in 1820; moved to its Ocean Road pocket park in 1917, one of eleven Long Island smock mills still standing.
Joseph P. Lamb
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church
Bridgehampton · 1842 · Federal, with later Victorian alterations
This third building went up in 1842; the National Register credits Joseph P. Lamb with the 1888-97 renovation campaign that gave the sanctuary its present, more ornamented form.
Rogers Aldrich and Cuyler Tuthill
Jamesport Meeting House
Jamesport · 1900 · Greek Revival
This is the 1900 rebuild, not the 1731 original — after lightning burned off the steeple, Rogers Aldrich and Cuyler Tuthill are the builders the National Register credits for raising it back thirty feet shorter.
Whaling money
Whale-oil fortunes buying Greek and Egyptian temples on Main Street, most of them via Minard Lafever.
Architect not recorded
Nathaniel Rogers House
Bridgehampton · 1840 · Greek Revival
Miniature painter Nathaniel Rogers gave an earlier house its temple front and Corinthian portico in 1840; a twenty-year restoration returned it as the Bridgehampton Museum.
Lighthouses
Federal maritime infrastructure built to save ships and the people on them, not to impress the road — light towers and life-saving stations, from a New York City Hall architect to the government's own staff engineers.
John McComb Jr.
Montauk Point Lighthouse
Montauk · 1796 · Federal-era light tower
New York City Hall architect John McComb Jr. designed this sandstone tower, commissioned by George Washington in 1796 — still an active Coast Guard light at the eastern tip of Long Island.
U.S. Lighthouse Service
Horton Point Lighthouse
Southold · 1857 · Mid-19th-century Revival
Built in 1857 by the U.S. Lighthouse Service on a Long Island Sound bluff; the keeper's cottage now holds the Southold Historical Society's small maritime museum.
Architect not recorded
Cedar Island Lighthouse, Cedar Point (ruin)
East Hampton · 1868 · Italianate
An 1868 Italianate lighthouse on what was Cedar Island until the 1938 hurricane joined it to the mainland; abandoned since 1934, now a 45-minute walk from the county park lot.
Architect not recorded
Plum Island Lighthouse
Orient · 1869 · Romanesque
A Romanesque brick tower on Plum Island's northwest corner, rebuilt in 1869 to replace the 1827 original; inside the federal research station, so visible only from the ferry crossing.
- Exterior only
U.S. Lighthouse Board
Orient Point Lighthouse ("Coffee Pot")
Orient · Cast-iron caisson lighthouse
A cast-iron caisson tower sunk into the shoal at the mouth of Plum Gut by the U.S. Lighthouse Board; visible only from shore or the Orient ferry deck.
- Exterior only
Resort era
The railroad-and-developer decades, when Montauk was going to be the Miami Beach of the north.
Modern
Postwar architects taking the local vernacular seriously — cedar, posts, dune light.
Contemporary
Institutions quoting barns: the region's plainest buildings replayed at museum scale.
- Why so few? A building lands here only when its owner publishes who designed it.
- Missing names. Guild Hall, the Watermill Center and Madoo credit no architect anywhere on their own sites.
- No famous beach houses. Almost every one is somebody’s home, on a private road.