George Skidmore, Architect Of Influence

It’s difficult to believe that George H. Skidmore (1841-1904), a Riverhead-based architect who practiced his art from the post-Civil War era until his death, left behind a body of work that shaped the architectural landscape of the twin forks and the south shore resort towns of Suffolk County. Yet he is barely known, if at all, today.Mr. Skidmore, who came from a prominent Riverhead family, attended local public schools and finished his education at a private institution.

His father, Luther Skidmore, served as Riverhead Town supervisor as well as tax collector. The elder Skidmore also owned a blind and sash manufacturing business in Riverhead, and young George worked there until becoming a partner in a planning and molding company offering woodturning, architectural plans and construction superintendent work. From 1870 on he worked as principal of his own architectural firm.

The term “architect” was used loosely during the late 19th century, and many practitioners came from the ranks of self-taught carpenter builders. While it is not known if George Skidmore had any formal architectural training, he was certainly well versed in the style of the times.

Primarily known for his designs for devotional architecture, he also created cutting-edge homes for the cottager set as well as commercial buildings. In the 1896 Portrait and Biographical Record of Suffolk County," George Skidmore’s reputation as an architect was characterized as “enviable.” The biographical sketch also stated that "his principal patronage comes from parties who are building fine cottages along the seashore, and in many beautiful spots which Long Island presents for summer homes or for permanent country seats.

"It is the general opinion that he has had the planning of more of these fine residences than any other architect on the island,” it continued.

A closer look at his work, seen, for example, in the main building and reviewing stand for the Riverhead Fairgrounds (1869), reveals themes and design predilections exhibited in built form that would be used throughout his long career. His designs were largely asymmetrical, reflective of the times, yet fused with the vernacular idiom in such a way as to render a building fresh and uniquely his. For the reviewing stand, triangular gables, with and without windows, sit on all four sides of a hipped roof terminating in a pent roof. The parapet also has a little pent flair at the bottom to break with the wall plane.

While the 1884 Amanda Hildreth residence (of the department store family) on South Main Street in Southampton employs features of the Queen Anne period, the house is more representative of the Aesthetic Movement. At the time of construction, the paint scheme enhanced the nuance of the detailing, consequently allowing the form and features to sing. Mr. Skidmore’s signature triangular dormers were used extensively in this cross-gabled, asymmetrical massing with a cascading roofline.

The casings and trimmings, all painted dark green, defined changes in the façade between materials and spatial borders. The clapboard of the first floor, all painted in taupe, was juxtaposed against the rich, red, decorative singles of the second floor. While these colors in recent years may not have been exactly identical to the original ones, they were pretty close in their values. The color scheme George Skidmore certainly must have recommended, based on other buildings he designed in the same era such as the 1887 Peconic School, was, in fact, an architectural feature unto itself.

The house sold in 2009, and with the approval of the Southampton Village Architectural Review Board, it was repainted in gray with white trim. All of the distinguishing features of the house, defined by the original paint colors of its era, have been eradicated in a sea of monotonous paint.

The 1887 Water Mill residence known as Red Gables for its red roof, designed for merchant industrialists Josiah Lombard and Marshall Ayres, was a rambling hybrid Queen Anne/shingle-style affair. The house used an even more elaborate Skidmore vocabulary of asymmetrically placed cross gables sitting within a larger hipped roof along with more pented eaves and triangulated projections.

Red Gables also reflected the Stick Style rustic influence of Richard Morris Hunt’s Griswold house in Newport, Rhode Island, where exterior timbers with infill stucco and wood were used decoratively instead of structurally. Red Gables has been renovated twice beyond recognition for different owners and is now known as Villa Maria.

In 1896 Mr. Skidmore also designed Quawksnest for the Ladies World magazine publisher Stuart Hull Moore, on New Suffolk Avenue in Mattituck. The shingle-style residence is named for the black-headed night heron that frequented the area. Quawksnest on Peconic Bay faces Shinnecock Hills directly to the south. The three-story, L-shaped house presents a gambrel roof with gable roof dormers and a gabled bay on the north side with a subsumed porch on the south elevation. The columns of both the porch posts and the porte cochere are shingle-clad.

Conjoined, twin gambrel cross gables, again asymmetrically placed in the roof, represent the major feature of the south façade and reflect the quirky influence of the English architect Edwin Lutyens. The property on small acreage also contains the original carriage and ice houses.

The interior of the house includes a grand central hallway with a colonial stairwell off of which all bedrooms pivot on the upper floors. The first floor open plan, unusual for the era, allows all of the public rooms to face the water. The house is also known for three Tiffany windows representing the hunting of the quawk. Although a small addition has been added, along with the replacement of windows over the years, the home remains remarkably intact.

The churches renovated and designed by Mr. Skidmore are widely recognized throughout Suffolk County. Every village usually had several churches of different denominations. Today, this seems like a great number of buildings dedicated to devotional architecture, but in the earlier centuries a 3-mile ride to church could take upward of an hour in a horse and buggy. In the sparsely populated towns of eastern Long Island, churches were village symbols and played a purposeful role in small town life.

The wealthy, however, had to have their own places of worship and entertainment, as their lives revolved around church and beach. According to the Skidmore scholar Patricia Orfanos, “Episcopal summer chapels were financed by wealthy outsiders who wished to attend services apart from the local populace. Not only was the local inhabitant left out, but so was the ordinary vacationer. The situation progressed so far as to be called ‘the great summer tragedy of American life.’”

St. Andrews by the Sea in Southampton, now known as the Dune Church, and the Church of the Atonement in Quogue are two examples of East End churches built for the wealthy.

Mr. Skidmore worked on many churches familiar to readers, such as Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor, the Presbyterian Church of Westhampton, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in East Moriches, the addition of the porte cochere for the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on Shelter Island, Mattituck Methodist Church, now the North Fork Community Theatre, East Marion Baptist Church, and the Presbyterian Church of the Moriches in Center Moriches.

The Center Moriches church goes back 250 years, but in 1886, Mr. Skidmore literally took the church to new heights with a makeover involving the lengthening of the church to include a front vestibule with a steeple above, which included the reinstallation of the original 1839 bell. A prayer meeting room, now the church parlor, and a porte cochere for parishioners were also added. The architect raised the roof by building a new one over the existing one. As an example of the Stick Style vernacular with exuberant details bordering on folk art, and with a dexterous balance of form and massing, this Presbyterian church represents one of Mr. Skidmore’s finest works. He was an American creative of the first rank.

Anne Surchin an East End architect, is vice chair of the Southold Landmarks Preservation Commission, and is currently working on a companion book to "Houses of the Hamptons 1880-1930."

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