That Big White House In Bridge?
Yep. Museum

By Katy Gurley

Chances are you've driven by the battered white Greek Revival house on the corner of the Montauk Highway and Ocean Avenue in Bridgehampton a hundred times and wondered when this lovely old historical house will get a well-deserved facelift.

Wonder no more. The Bridgehampton Historical Society has agreed, just within the last few weeks, to sink $4.5 million into the house. Construction will take about three years.

"From the outside, it looks like nothing's happening with the house, but, in fact, there has been a lot going on behind the scenes to get this building restored," said John Eilertsen, executive director of the Bridgehampton Historical Society, which is charged with the restoration and management of the house, under an agreement with the Town of Southampton. The town actually owns the 6,000-square-foot house and the surrounding six acres of land.

It is officially known as the Nathaniel Rogers House, but having been through many phases of ownership is also known as the Hampton House (operated as a hotel from 1886 to 1949) and the Hopping House, for the Hopping family who owned the house the longest period of time.

The original house was built by Abraham T. Rose about 1824. It was a much smaller four-bedroom house then and, though there are no photos available of the original house, it is clear that it looked nothing like the existing house today. The Rose house was purchased and extensively rebuilt in about 1840 by Nathaniel Rogers, an accomplished artist who was born in Bridgehampton in 1787, and was the grandson of a famous patriot of the Revolutionary War.

It was Rogers who created the Greek Revival exterior that stands today. In addition to the four-column exterior, he also extensively rebuilt the interior, adding two bedrooms, four additional rooms and a central hallway downstairs. He also added a cupola on top of the house (which was torn down sometime over the years when the roof needed repair). When the house was turned into a hotel, four bedrooms were created in the attic, and some further renovations were added to the exterior, but there have been few substantial changes to the house since then.

"The exterior of the house is going to look the way it looked before it became the Hampton House," said Eilertsen. He expects the construction phases for the exterior and interior of the house to be 12 to 18-months long each.

The renovation will be funded through money from a state grant, $1 million from the Town of Southampton and private donations from neighbors and friends in Bridgehampton and Sagaponack. So far, $2.5 million has been raised, according to Eilertsen, with $2 million left to be funded.

Once completed, the Bridgehampton Historical Society will move from its current location in the Corwith House, across from the Bridgehampton Candy Kitchen, into the second and third floors of the Rogers house. The first floor will feature, among other things, exhibition space, and be open to the public.

"In addition to exhibit space, we'll also have a research center for people who want to trace their genealogies. Our historic photos and entire collection will be stored in the house," he said. Eventually, the records will be computerized, making them more easily and quickly accessible to the public.

The lead architect for the restoration is Michael Devonshire, director of conservation for the firm Jan Hird Pokorney in New York.

"We are presently at the 'schematic' phase of the design, which is really just getting the general idea of what the restoration will entail," he said. "The general goal of the project will be appropriate reuse of the building for programs by both the Bridgehampton Historical Society and the Town of Southampton. Both groups are fully committed to the restoration of this amazing cultural landmark. Our office senses that dedication, and we fully intend to appropriately restore this building to its deserved place in local history.

"We are preservation architects and so the vision we have for the house is that of continued use and safeguarding of this important cultural landmark into the future," he added.

Because the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the firm will follow the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Treatment of Historic Properties, conserving the architectural elements and materials significant to the story of the house. They will restore or repair rather than replace deteriorated architectural features where possible, he said.

The man responsible for those architectural features, Nathaniel Rogers, was a member of the American Academy and a founding member of the National Academy of Art and Design, according to Bridgehampton Historical Society records. He is said to have had a hand in some of the design of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, and by his retirement, he had painted miniature portraits of most of New York City's fashionable people of his day. Nathaniel Rogers died in 1844, shortly after the remodeling of his house was complete. The house remained in his family's hands until 1857.

It was then sold to Captain James R. Huntting, an extraordinarily successful whaling captain, and, in 1873, the Hunttings sold the house to Mary S. DeBost, wife of Augustus B. DeBost, who, with his brother Leon, ran DeBost Brothers dry goods business in New York. Leon D. DeBost was a founder of the Southampton summer colony. A decade later, they leased their home to E. P. Storm who operated it as the Hampton House, a boarding house, from at least 1886 to 1888.

In 1894, new owners John Hedges and Frank Hopping transformed the by-then rundown residence into the most elegant inn in Bridgehampton.

The last innkeeper, Caroline Hopping, leased the front yard to a gas station in 1952. She died later that year, and at her death, the assessment of the property read "a house which is very old and in run-down condition." For the next half century, until 2004, it was the residence of the Hopping family alone.

The architects will seek to restore the look of the Hampton House in its heyday - and before.

"Our office treats buildings of this character and caliber as important artifacts," Devonshire said, noting, "Considering its present state, you will not believe how great this building will look when it's finished."

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