Former Vermont Governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean’s family has sold the pond front home in East Hampton Village that he grew up in.
The Dean family got their full asking price of $21.75 million for the traditional house on 3.33-acre property on a private lane that leads to Hook Pond in a deal that closed Thursday.
Roxanne A. Briggs, Shannan M. North and Peter M. Turino of Brown Harris Stevens represented the property at 16 Hook Pond Lane. Marilyn Clark of the Clark+Thoerner Team at Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyers. The listing went into contract within a week of coming on the market on February 23. The agents declined to confirm it was the Dean property, but property records show Dean Family Limited Partnership owns the property.
“Idyllic Hook Pond is the very essence of East Hampton Village,” says Turino. “It is a truly unique habitat, abundant with flora and fauna and separated by a natural dune from the Atlantic Ocean. Rarely do the pond front properties trade (the last was in 2009) so this sale is very special,” he says.
“The size, width and orientation of this particular property made it especially desirable, and the sale was a successful team effort with the right energy and synergy all around. An important property starts a new chapter with new owners,” he adds.
“This is the most magical property,” Clark says. “I was happy to be involved in the sale of it.”
The buyers were not publicly named either.
The home, which has 333 feet of frontage, offers a panoramic view of Hook Pond, the famed Maidstone Club’s golf course, and the Atlantic Ocean. The existing house was built around 1960 and offers five bedrooms and four bathrooms, as well as a two-car garage.
The listing says a principal structure of 15,320 square feet is permitted for the property. 3.33 acres with 333′ water frontage. Truly, a remarkable opportunity.
“I more or less grew up out there,” Dean told The Independent, which later merged with Dan’s Papers, in a phone interview in 2019. “It’s the only place I’ve ever voted besides Vermont. And my mother still lives out there.”
His mother, Andree Dean, who was an active member of the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society, the East Hampton Historical Society and the Village Preservation Society, died in 2021 at the age of 92.
The Dean family’s roots in East Hampton go back to the 18th Century. “Big Howard,” Dean’s father who died in 2001, was involved with St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and was a member of the Maidstone Club.
During the conversation with The Independent, Dean shared happy childhood memories growing up in East Hampton, “when you were allowed to have fires on the beach and it wasn’t a big deal,” he said, laughing. “I remember going to Georgica Beach and surfing, then having a cookout around the fire, toasting marshmallows, and just having fun.”
Though Dean lives in Vermont, he has spoken out against big development along Hook Pond that he said “fundamentally changed the nature of the town that I grew up in,” according to The East Hampton Star. He attended a 2017 East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting about a variance application allowing a detached 748-square-foot garage in a front yard, which is prohibited by zoning.
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