Historic Bridgehampton House Is For Sale

A “For Sale” sign went up quietly at a historic home late last fall, even as Bridgehampton residents focused intently on the historic Wick’s Tavern corner just next door, the site where a controversial CVS Pharmacy was, until last month, expected to be built.

The Victorian, Gothic Revival style farmhouse at 24 Lumber Lane is a stone’s throw from Bridgehampton’s Main Street. The residence has gabled windows and what a Southampton Town hamlet heritage report describes as an Italianate bracketed entry porch, which wraps around the main house and is joined outside by any number of decks and patios.

Patients of the original owner, Dr. Edgar Mulford, would enter through the third of three doors on that porch, which led to a waiting room, and then to his clinic.

A descendant of one of East Hampton’s founding families, he lost only one patient during a deadly influenza pandemic in 1918—“a success attributed to his advisories to residents not to travel,” the heritage report says.

The doctor himself traveled by horse and buggy, and then Stanley Steamer, to make house calls.

His family entered their home through door number one, according to Andrea Hunt, the present owner. Guests used door number two—the middle one, which led to a parlor—to make a more formal entrance.

The front doors, the porch, a carriage house where the doctor kept his horses and Stanley Steamers, even bottles of pills that Ms. Hunt found in the basement still exist, although the house has been extensively renovated and redecorated in Victorian style.

Also standing is an ancient chestnut tree that the listing agent, Pamela Walsh of Town & Country, believes could be at least one of the oldest on Long Island.

Overall, the 0.7-acre property has more than 5,300 square feet of living space, according to the listing, which sets the asking price just south of $2.5 million. The main house, which is approved by the town for use as a bed-and-breakfast, has six fireplaces, a large living room where waiting and examining rooms used to be, a “chef’s kitchen” leading to an outdoor deck, a formal dining room, a library, an office, and three en-suite bedrooms with fireplaces.

The almost 2,200-square-foot carriage house contains four separate living spaces, each with its own theme of decor, a stable room with original barn doors and a grain chute for the horses.

“This needs somebody who really feels the historical nature of Bridgehampton,” said Ms. Hunt, who bought the house in 1990 with her late husband, Srinanda Dey, and went on to fix it up, with a great deal of careful attention. She has received offers from people who intended to tear the house down and replace it, but she said, “I’m really looking for someone who will cherish it the way we have.

“Everybody wants this white Hamptons megamansion … this Pottery Barn look,” she added.

There is room for a pool and some expansion, according to Ms. Walsh. “It’s a cool house,” she said. “There’s a ton of uses for this house. It would be fantastic as a family compound.”

The fact that a CVS is no longer going in next door could be another plus, although what will go in at the Wick’s Tavern corner is yet to be determined. “Compared to that old gas station, anything’s going to be an improvement,” said the sales agent, referring to an earlier inhabitant of the corner. “Because of that fence and the shrubbery, you have your own little enclave,” she said of the nearby property on Lumber Lane.