An estate sale is underway this weekend at The Apaquogue, a beloved East Hampton house that sold last year, leaving many wondering if the new owners will demolish it.
The house at 72 Apaquogue, which dates to 1884 and is in many ways a symbol of East Hampton’s summer colony, sold for $14 million on November 21, 2021. We hear the new owners are planning to keep the home, but exactly what their plans are is not yet clear.
According to the East Hampton Village building department this week, there has been no application filed for demolition. While the home is seen as a symbol of old East Hampton, it can be modified as it is not protected in any way. (In the village, only timber frame houses and homes in the historic district are protected from demolition).
Meanwhile, Kathy Conway, who owns East End Estate Sale with Terri Doyle, is handling the weekend sale, which will include an array of goods, both new and old.
“There’s an original rocking chair that I’m told was from the house. There’s a vintage baby high chair,” she says, adding there is also a Serena and Lily leather swivel studded chair.
Items range from vintage rattan to pottery, a ping pong table to West Elm chaise lounges, and planters to kitchen items. “It’s a mixed bag,” Conway says.
The sale is being held Friday, September 9, and Saturday, September 10, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then Sunday, September 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Those viewing items will have access to the first two floors.
There is interest in the home’s future. It was recently the subject of Our Hamptons podcast.
Linda Beyer of the village’s building department reported the home’s Certificate of Occupancy was updated in November and an application for a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan has been filed and is waiting to be approved. An SWPPP needs to be in place before a building permit can be issued, according to Beyer.
The front facade of the four-story house faces Apaquogue Road and real estate agents told Behind The Hedges in 2021 that prospective buyers interested in restoring the house asked about picking it up and moving it to the center of the four-acre property, which could be done.
According to Images of America: East Hampton, the house stands on the site of the first boarding house in the East Hampton summer colony, operated by Abraham D. Candy, a teacher at the Clinton Academy (now a museum). Candy also owned a 107-acre farm and began renting to boarders in the early 1840s.
The farm changed hands in 1882 when Mrs. E. A. Laforest of New York purchased it, though it was destroyed that winter in a fire. A new boarding house, called the Apaquogue, was built there two years later. In 1895, The East Hampton Star reported, “The spot upon which the Apaquogue is located is famous as a summer boarding place,” noting that it overlooked the ocean on the south side. “The location for the house is such that most delightful marine and landscape views can be had from each room.”
The boarding house was built just as the railroad first arrived in East Hampton when New York City residents were looking to escape the heat and go to the beach, where it was 10 degrees cooler, Frank Newbold of Sotheby’s International Realty said last year.
The shingled house features a wide large wrap-around porch, high ceilings on all of the floors and a large dining room to accommodate boarders. Period details remain, such as the original transoms over the doors. The doors could be shut for privacy, but the transoms would be left open to allow the ocean breezes in, Newbold explained.
There were also numbers on many of the bedrooms and the original “bell call” was intact.
The property was sold in 1912 to Mrs. A. A. Cater of New York, who had plans to convert the building into a summer residence. But, before that occurred, it was sold again, eventually ending up in the hands of Julian S. Myrick, president of the Maidstone Club, in 1919.
His descendants put it on the market in 2019 for the first time in 100 years, listing it for $16.9 million. It was briefly removed and then reintroduced during the summer of 2020 with a $2 million price reduction.
Email tvecsey@danspapers.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Behind The Hedges on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
