Renovated Historic Water Mill Home Will Open for Insider's View Tour

“We saw the bones and loved it,” Paul Horn said of the 1790 house in Water Mill that he and his partner, Anthony Squatrito, purchased in 2011.

They gut-renovated the historic structure over five years, maintaining its original footprint and highlighting period features such as the wide-plank floors, timber ceiling beams and brick fireplaces.

On Saturday, September 6, they will welcome visitors to explore the house and the 1-acre property it sits on during the Southampton History Museum’s Insider’s View Tour of Southampton Homes & Gardens. The annual event offers a rare glimpse behind the hedges at private homes, often ones with historic significance like Horn and Squatrito’s.

“It’s a second- or third-generation Halsey house,” Horn said, noting the house’s connection to one of Southampton’s founding families.

The historic integrity of the house is protected by the nonprofit Peconic Land Trust.

“There’s what’s called a historical lien on the property,” Horn explained. “It gives the Peconic Land Trust a perpetual, irrevocable ownership interest in the house. But there’s good latitude. You have to maintain the outside look, appearance, fenestration, roof lines, but everything inside is subject to whatever you want to do. But we obviously tried to maintain, outside and inside, with some historical character.”

The house has five fireplaces — every room on the first floor has one. The only fireplace that is not original is in the kitchen.

“The kitchen had to be redone because it came down in a hurricane in the ’60s,” Horn said. “And when we bought it, we tried to repair it, and the mason, he just couldn’t get anything that was solid enough. So we took the bricks down, and they just rebuilt it the same way, on a solid foundation.”

The house hadn’t been touched in 50 or 60 years at the time they bought it, he explained.

“We ended up taking it down to the timber frame studs, inside and outside, and redoing from there — and just trying to keep the character,” he said. “Of course, while we had it open, we updated all the mechanicals — the plumbing and the heating and the electric. But it was pretty rough. There was a dirt crawl space, so everything was kind of musty, to be polite, and it hadn’t been lived in for over a year.”

The prior owner had passed away, and they purchased it from the estate.

“The prior owner entered into the lien on the house a few years before he died,” Horn said. “He saw the writing on the wall that every old house in the area would be torn down and replaced with a McMansion, and decided he wanted to try to preserve this one, particularly since it was so close to the corner of the road.”

Squatrito credits Horn with doing most of the renovation work. Squatrito, an interior designer with his own namesake firm who has clients all over the country, did the design.

“It was a labor of love over the course of five years,” Horn said.

At every turn they found something unexpected, Horn said. And working with the town on permits was also a challenge, he said, because as a 250-year-old timber frame house, it didn’t fit very neatly into what the town is used to seeing.

Finding people to work on the house was another hurdle.

“Eventually I was lucky to find a couple of local craftsmen who were able to help us out with some of the framing, the floors, etc.,” Horn said. “But that was tough, just finding people who could appreciate how old it was and that we didn’t just want to strip all the character out of it that we wanted to maintain.”

Horn is a banker by profession, but he said restoring old houses is his passion. The Water Mill house is their first time doing anything “this extreme,” taking a house down to the studs and bringing it back, he said.

“It’s fun, and I’m ready for another,” he added.

He called it a mid-life project and said they both thought they would fix it up and maybe sell it. “And through the process, both of us fell in love with it and just said ‘We don’t want to part with it.’ So we sold everything else. We made this our home for the family.”

Horn, Squatrito and their beagle, Norman — named after the character played by Henry Fonda in the film “On Golden Pond” — split their time between Manhattan and Water Mill, and they frequently welcome members of their large family to Water Mill.

The house is outfitted with antiques that lend themselves to the atmosphere of the historic structure, and artwork that they have collected.

In Nantucket, they picked up a woolie — a type of embroidered folk art that 19th century sailors made while on ships. It hangs on a wall opposite some botanical prints.

A large-scale painting of a Martha’s Vineyard farm by Dan VanLandingham hangs in a sitting area.

“I was in Martha’s Vineyard for work, for a project, and saw the gallery and just loved it, and thought it would be great for here,” Squatrito recalled.

Over the kitchen fireplace is a portrait of a sailor. They have had the painting for about 25 years, and it previously lived with them in a circa 1911 Montclair, New Jersey, house that they renovated.

“We found him in an antique store, and we felt he needed to be adopted,” Horn said. “So there’s actually an inscription on it that says he drowned — we assume in service. And it was painted by a friend of the family.”

They have a number of antiques from Morgan MacWhinnie in North Sea, and have also picked up antiques on their travels.

To go with their English-style house, they bought a flintlock rifle in London, but it is not the same rifle that ultimately ended up displayed above one of the fireplace mantels.

“We couldn’t figure out how to import it so we had to give up,” Horn said. “Finally, we bought this one up in Massachusetts from an antiques dealer.”

The first floor retains its original layout, and the wood-burning fireplaces are all operational — and they are put to use.

Upstairs are three bedrooms and a bathroom — with a double vanity, soaking tub and walk-in shower — plus a well-concealed laundry room.

“This, we reconfigured drastically from what it was,” Squatrito said of the second floor.

Horn noted that they raised the ceiling.

“The ceiling was here,” he said, showing the original height with his hand. “So it was like a chicken coop.”

Around the landing is a William Morris wallpaper pattern featuring fruit and vines.

“I thought this pattern felt historical,” Squatrito said, “even though it’s probably from the 1920s and not the 1790s. But it felt appropriate to the house.”

Additional, nonhistorical buildings include a garage, a workshop, a future guest cottage that they are still working on and a potting shed that the Peconic Land Trust permitted them to rebuild as the original could not be saved.

Horn built the new potting shed with reclaimed lumber and windows he acquired at Lumber + Salt on the North Fork.

A bluestone patio is off the kitchen, and a second, gravel patio between large hydrangeas is a setting for a large dining table and potted culinary herbs.

Horn’s favorite part of living there is the land.

“I just love the setting,” he said, describing looking out across the property in the morning or evening as “just heaven.”

Squatrito’s favorite part is the kitchen.

“It was the biggest transformation from what it was when we bought it to what it is now,” he said. “So I find that very satisfying. … We have a big family. It’s just like the hub of the house.”

During the renovation, it was one surprise after another.

The Southampton History Museum’s Insider’s View Tour of Southampton Homes & Gardens is Saturday, September 6, from 1 to 4 p.m. at various locations that will be disclosed on the day of the tour. A reception will follow from 4:15 to 6 p.m. at the Rogers Mansion, 17 Meeting House Lane, Southampton. Pick up tickets between 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on September 6 at the Halsey House & Garden, 249 South Main Street, Southampton. Tickets are $175 in advance or $250 on the day of. Register at southamptonhistory.org/iv.