Southampton History Museum Offers Insider's View Of Village Properties

When Joyce and Robert Giuffra moved into their gabled Southampton Village house in 2012, the couple stood in awe of the exterior soft-gray palette and pebbled circular driveway at the curb of their new home.They filled the house with a stylish tailored interior and a third-floor game room for their three children. But their son, Robert, who was 4 years old at the time, was more fascinated with the back lawn’s vista leading to Lake Agawam, going down to the dock to join his two older sisters, Caroline and Elizabeth, to feed the swans.

The Giuffra family and six other owners of exquisite village homes and landmarks are opening their often private estates to the public on Saturday, June 2, for the ninth annual Insider’s View tour of Southampton homes to benefit the Southampton History Museum.

“We think that the Southampton History Museum plays an important role in terms of preserving the history and the nature of the village,” Ms. Giuffra said. “Our house also has a history as part of one of the original landmarks, Mocomonto, in Southampton.”

Ms. Giuffra’s home was originally a guest wing of Mocomonto, a historic resort house on Lake Agawam. The wing was later moved north to the property where it stands today, abutting Mocomonto.

“It’s very much so in the fashion of the time’s shingle style, of that turn of the century,” she said of the core of her home, built in 1897. It is the home’s family area and has views of the water. “We have three children who are lucky enough to spend time down by Lake Agawam during the summer and all year round,” she added.

Since 2012, Mocomonto’s new owner, Ken Fox, has sought to renovate and expand the 19th century Victorian. The plan has been met by opposition, including Ms. Giuffra’s objections over its grandiose 25-bedroom, 14-bathroom design and its potential impact on the wetlands.

Ms. Giuffra said she appreciates the history museum’s special attention to the village’s founding.

The museum’s executive director, Tom Edmonds, said the event is an opportunity to look beyond Southampton Village’s hedgerows.

“Because who doesn’t want to go into some of these beautiful homes in Southampton?” Mr. Edmonds said. “Southampton is a summer destination for people in the region, and Southampton has a brand. A lot of stores like Ralph Lauren say ‘Paris, New York, Southampton’—we are a world-class resort where people like to look at homes and see our charming village.”

Mr. Edmonds said many locals have made tour reservations, as well as visitors from New York City, Connecticut and other parts of Long Island. The house tour kicks off at 1 p.m. at the museum’s historic Thomas Halsey House—at 249 South Main Street—and concludes with a Champagne reception, catered by Sant Ambroeus, at the museum’s Rogers Mansion on Meeting House Lane. The cost is $110 on the day of the tour, or $95 in advance.

One highlight of the tour is a classic village gem that sits on nearly an acre that was once the home of Captain E. Halsey; he built it in 1848 after his final whaling voyage on the Ship Franklin. It has raised ceilings and added beams to achieve an airy look surrounded by a landscape of tall evergreen trees.

Linden, one of the village’s foremost estates, is also on the tour this year. The 18,000-square-foot summer home is situated on nearly 10 acres that had belonged to the renowned New York architect Grosvenor Atterbury, designer of the original Parrish Art Museum.

The house nicknamed Three Chimneys by the history museum is the home of Brian Brady, a classical architect by trade, and owner of Brady Designs. He encourages visitors to take a walk up and down Post Crossing.

“All of the homes on the street are historic homes in the traditional style, and in all kinds of styles,” he said. “My home had always stuck out to me because it’s a colonial revival, and there are very few colonial revivals in Southampton Village.”

The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath home sitting on 0.44 acre has not really changed since it was built in 1929 by Edward Post White and Lizbeth Halsey White—who both belonged to founding families of Southampton Village. The bathrooms and the kitchen were modernized for present-day convenience, though the original built-in cabinetry and a pantry still remain.

“In the winter, I love the living room because there is this really fabulous original fireplace in there and it’s just the coziest, warmest room in the winter,” Mr. Brady said as he rummaged through photographs framed on his stained oak mantel. It was never painted. The large brick body of the fireplace “makes a statement in the room.” Pastel, beachy colors fill many of the rooms.

“There’s original hardware in [the fireplace] from when families used to cook in there—a big bracket on hinges that you could hang a pot from. And then in the summer, there is a family room off of it that has windows on three sides so the sun pours in all day long. The entire house gets great light because it’s not a big house and there are windows everywhere.”

Dubbed the Pink Charmer, fashion designer Alan Flusser’s home is surely a looker. Unlike his custom men’s clothing and haberdashery items that are modeled in showcase windows, Mr. Flusser’s Southampton home has been a well-kept secret for the most part.

“I have done a lot of interior design over the years, but this was the first time I built a home from scratch, from A-to-Z,” Mr. Flusser said. It’s a Bermuda pink house with brown and white shutters. Through the front door is a two-story foyer with wallpaper featuring huge palm leaves. Just off a ways, a spacious living room and sunroom, complete with oversized furniture “that you can just dive into,” leads harmoniously to the pool and cabana that are surrounded by roses and other flowers. Murals and artwork covers many of the walls.

“My vision was to build something that one might have seen in Southampton or in Newport or primarily Palm Beach in the 1930s, but with a little bit of a modern twist. No detail was overlooked. ... Calling it eclectic would be a terrible word, but it’s got very interesting pieces of some art and furniture, and lots of whimsy. It has a general English-country house feel—Sister Parish meets Colefax and Fowler.”

Mr. Flusser said his home was a favorite place to visit of his friend and novelist Tom Wolfe, who died in May.

“Tom would say it had a lot of personality,” Mr. Flusser said, referring to Mr. Wolfe’s love of the home’s mix of styles, and of the large white television that matched Mr. Wolfe’s famous white suit.

Reservations for Insider’s View on Saturday, June 2, can be made at southamptonhistory.org or by calling 631-283-2494.