Plans For 19th Century Sag Harbor Home Include Shoreline Restoration, Phragmites Removal

A plan to move a historic Green Street house away from wetlands and to replace nonhistoric additions has been met with favor by the Sag Harbor Village Historic Preservation & Architectural Review Board, though there are a number of modifications that board members wish to see before signing off on the plans.

The landscaping plan for 12 Green Street includes a stormwater-runoff-capturing meadow and cutting down or removing Phragmites, the invasive reed, and the homeowners have offered to pay for Phragmites removal on other properties that also have frontage on Upper Sag Harbor Cove.

The owners are Blythe Harris, the co-founder and chief creative officer of direct sales jewelry and accessories company Stella & Dot, and her husband, Mark Harris, the CEO of Knowable, a contracts data company that uses machine learning. The couple paid $5.3 million to purchase 12 Green Street in 2018. A real estate listing at the time described the house as a 1,700-square-foot “charming 1870s historic farmhouse” with 121 feet of water frontage. The Harrises previously owned another home on the same block, 5 Green Street, but sold it that same year.

Mickey Benson, the studio director of Manhattan architecture firm G.P. Schafer Architect, presented updated plans for 12 Green Street to the Historic Preservation & Architectural Review Board on Thursday, July 9. He shared the changes to the plan that he made to assuage some concerns that board members expressed during a site visit, and he received even more feedback.

The original part of the house is a late-19th century two-story gable structure, Mr. Benson explained, and there are two additions, one each on the east and west sides.

The west addition, on the waterfront side, was added in the 1960s, he said.

“We’re proposing to add a one-story addition in its place that we feel is a little more historically contextual,” he said. It will have clapboard siding, corner boards, a flat roof with decorative railing, and six-over-six double-hung windows.

The eastern side, the kitchen wing, will be removed and replaced with a larger addition, expanding the footprint a few feet toward the east.

A third addition is planned on the north side.

“We’re proposing to add a two-story gable addition extension to the north that’s away from the street side,” Mr. Benson said. “We were considerate of delineating between the proposed and the existing, so we do not have alignments, either in the ridge of the roof, the eave of the roof — and, in fact, the floor levels slightly step down at that northern addition so we can maintain that sort of hierarchy of the original historic two-story volume and keep them distinct from one another.”

The plan also calls for lifting the original structure and moving it 8 feet back from the waterfront. It will also be raised 1 foot, bringing the ridge height up to 38.3 feet. Earlier plans had called for raising the house 27 inches, but that was reduced in response to board members’ concerns.

Edmund Hollander, the president of his eponymous landscape architecture firm, Hollander Design, presented the plans for the grounds of the 0.46-acre property and the waterfront. “Because I live a block away and I’m a citizen of the Village of Sag Harbor, this is important to me from a couple of standpoints,” he told the board.

“[Mr. Harris] has been very proactive and encouraging in saying whatever we can do to improve the ecology of this site, along with the aesthetics of the landscape, is very important to him,” he said.

To that end, Mr. Hollander said a shoreline restoration is planned, including removing Phragmites in front of the Harris property and all the way up Green Street, where the waterfront is degraded.

The question remains whether the Phragmites will be dug out or repeatedly cut down.

“The Phragmites actually respond well to cutting, because if you cut them two or three times a year, you slowly reduce the energy in the rhizomes that are in there, and as they start to die down we can plant into it native spartina grasses and other wetland appropriate species,” Mr. Hollander said. “Or we can actually go and dig out the Phragmites. That’s going to get us into a series of permitting opinions.”

While digging, dredging and removing has a more immediate impact, cutting Phragmites will not involve removing soils or anything else, he noted.

“But whatever you do with Phragmites, it’s a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way, because they’re going to come back, and we’re going to try to plant enough native grass where we basically won’t allow them to come back to the party,” Mr. Hollander said.

He is also taking the native planting approach with the existing lawn.

“The lawn area that currently exists within about 30 or 40 feet of the bay will also be removed and restored back to much more of a native upland meadow,” he said.

He said such meadows are found in North Haven: “We see some examples of this little native bluestem meadow that has native butterfly weed and things like that, which is both very lovely and, obviously, would be beneficial to the water quality of the area by preventing any fertilizer or chemicals from getting into the bay.”

Major trees will be kept, and a new kitchen garden will be planted off the kitchen porch. “We will find the nine plants that the deer won’t eat in the Village of Sag Harbor to plant there,” Mr. Hollander said.

A small gravel dining terrace will provide outdoor seating, and reclaimed stone will surround a small pool in a private, hedged backyard area.

“Everything is both visually discreet and ecologically appropriate and, hopefully, a benefit to the village when it’s all done,” Mr. Hollander said.

Board Chairman Dean Gomolka expressed support for the plans. “It’s a wonderful project and a gallant effort on the owner to go beyond his property and help restore our wetland — so that’s fantastic,” he said.

The board’s architectural consultant, Zach Studenroth, also complimented the plan, saying, “On the whole, this is a very good response to enlarging this house and modifying some earlier alternations that weren’t really of any historical significance.”

Mr. Studenroth did, however, suggest that the door for the new kitchen wing be made to look more like the existing front door, which has glass to let light into the front hall. The currently proposed kitchen entry door also has glass, but is multi-paned and looks modern and discordant, he said.

A second change that he suggested and several board members agreed with was reducing the size of the proposed chimneys.

He said that new cooking stations have become popular these days and, as a result, larger chimneys are built to accommodate them, but in this case, two overscaled chimneys are planned.

Board member Judith Long objected to the decorative railing, saying it does not feel in keeping with the rest of the project. Mr. Gomolka concurred and said the proposed railing design is “too fussy” and close to Chippendale style.

Board member David Berridge suggested the porch columns be scaled down.

“As my mother used to say, that’s mutton dressed up as lamb,” Mr. Berridge said. “This building has got so many good bones, I don’t think we need such columns that are on steroids. I think what you’re doing to the house — moving it back and just moving it up 1 foot and restoring it into its glory — is going to be such an addition, I don’t think we need to put too much more fluff into it.”

Brian DeSesa, the attorney for the applicants, thanked the board members for their consideration and said the plan will be going before the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Harbor Committee for other required approvals.