East Hampton Homeowners Show Off Their Passions for Historical Society House Tour

Furniture, lighting and accessories gallery owner Howard Williams and event planner Eric Gunhus will open their restored 1919 center-hall colonial revival to the public for the first time on Thanksgiving weekend as part of the East Hampton Historical Society House and Garden Tour.

The engaged couple purchased the home in 2015 and set about updating and reviving it the next year. Williams said it hadn’t been touched in 100 years and needed every single thing done to it.

Gunhus explained that they purchased the house from the three grandchildren of the original owner who built it.

“One of the reasons why they selected us as the buyers is because we didn’t want to tear it down,” Gunhus said. “We wanted to sort of take what was here and bring it back to life versus starting over. And I think that was important to them because they still live in the neighborhood, and it was important to them and their family.”

“Actually made it better than ever,” Williams added.

The family shared photos of what the house originally looked like, and it guided the restoration: Through reviewing the photos, Gunhus and Williams learned that the house was missing shutters, so they added shutters back, and they realized the columns in front of the house had been replaced at some point in the wrong style, so they put the correct columns back in.

They bumped out the back of the house, excavated a basement, and tore off and replaced a 1960s sunroom. Gunhus said the sunroom had been added to the house originally as an afterthought, but the new sunroom is more in the vein of what it would have looked like had it been built when the house was originally designed. And they added a dining porch on the other side of the house, mirroring the sunroom and providing symmetry, he said.

Gunhus is the owner of EG Event Group and Williams owns High Style Deco, a furniture, lighting and accessories gallery in Manhattan that carries “the best of the 20th century.”

Gunhus said the home was a way that they could bring their two passions together.

They had been collecting antiques and artworks for years before they purchased the house, Williams added.

The timeline of the objects in the house span from 3,000-year-old Egyptian antiquities to new custom lighting, though most of the furniture is mid-20th century.

“We wanted it to appear as if it had been lovingly restored in the mid-century as sort of a backstory,” Gunhus explained.

When they acquired the property, the woods came all the way up to the back of the house, Williams said. They cleared it, and built a pool house and garage from the ground up.

The pool house features a 1907 Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass window, which is the focal point.

“The whole pool house is designed around that window,” Williams said.

The pool area includes patio space for lounge chairs and a pavilion with a fireplace. It’s Gunhus’s own design.

“I designed it on the back of a napkin,” he said, adding that he worked with their architect, Anthony Vermandois of Sag Harbor, who specializes in renovations of historically significant homes.

“He’s an expert in restoring homes accurately,” Gunhus said of Vermandois, who came recommended by their general contractor, Tom O’Donoghue, also of Sag Harbor.

Williams said they didn’t want the house, inside, to be an open concept, with all the walls torn down. “We wanted to keep the original floor plan as much as we can and to improve on it without trying to modernize it too much,” he said.

Gunhus said that the trend is grand, open spaces. But that’s not what they were after.

“We actually like the opposite,” he said. “Back in the 1920s, it was small, intimate rooms, and me, as an event planner, I know when entertaining, the bigger your space the actually less intimate your gathering. So I love intimate spaces for entertaining because it makes people more intimately interactive. And when you have these grand open spaces, it might feel expansive, but it actually lessens intimacy.”

One intimate room with a fireplace and modern seating has a grand piano — the first piece of furniture they moved into the home.

“There was nothing else in the home except that piano, and I had it tuned and had a piano player come over,” recalled Gunhus, who was a Broadway performer for many years — with “The Producers” and “Billy Elliot: The Musical,” among his theater credits — before transitioning into event planning. “And the first thing that happened in this home was music, and music has of course always been important to me.”

The house includes a Sonos audio system so when they have parties with a pianist, they can put a microphone at the piano and broadcast the music to other rooms.

Though this will be their first time opening their home for a house tour, they have attended the East Hampton tour many times before.

“We have gone on the tour every year that we’ve been out here,” Gunhus said. “We love doing it, and we love supporting East Hampton Historical Society and all that they do.”

Neither finds the prospect of having strangers tour their home intimidating.

“Homes are meant for sharing,” Gunhus said. “… We’re looking at it as a way to share with the community what we both do.”

They plan to show how Gunhus uses a home for entertaining and how Williams decorates a Hamptons home in nontraditional ways, so visitors can be inspired to incorporate those ideas into their own homes.

“We didn’t decorate the house as another beach house,” Williams said. They used little things they love that are beautiful, despite others sometimes telling them that it doesn’t fit a Hamptons theme, he explained. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “You decorate with what you love.”

“It’s moody and comfortable, and darker textures and colors than people would normally think of the Hamptons,” Gunhus said. “But when people come here, they’re like, ‘It is so not Hamptons, but it is so right.’ It just feels cozy. It feels warm. It feels inviting.”

While the home is not beachy, there is an ocean theme, with wall coverings that feature waves, rugs with organic patterns that evoke the sea, a dining room carpet that evokes sea kelp, a Silas Seandel “Wave” dining table, and more.

“Everything still is tied into being close to the ocean like we are, and yet nothing is traditionally what people think of as Hamptons beach decor,” Gunhus said.

The home also includes a number of found objects, including an 1800s fireplace mantel, newel posts from an Indiana schoolhouse, and antique glass salvaged from the Bulova watchcase factory in Sag Harbor.

“We look to incorporate found artifacts and older components,” Gunhus said.

“It gives them a new life,” Williams added.

Just one visit to the house will not be enough to take it all in.

“In every room, there are details at every turn,” Gunhus said, and even their friends who have been there many times say they see something new every time they visit. “It’s kind of a fun feast for the eyes,” he said.

The 37th annual East Hampton Historical Society House and Garden Tour will take place on Saturday, November 26, from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $85 in advance or $100 at the door. There will also be a benefit cocktail party on Friday, November 25, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Maidstone Club with tickets starting at $250 per person, which also includes admission to the tour. Purchase tickets by going to easthamptonhistory.org/events, calling 631-324-6850 or visiting the Clinton Academy at 151 Main Street, East Hampton, on Friday, November 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. or Saturday, November 26, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.