Howard Street Home In Sag Harbor A Royal Acquisition

At one time, Union Street in Sag Harbor was home to Lady Caroline Black. Now Howard Street, on the other side of Main Street, has its own royalty … well, sort of. A house there has been purchased by the Patricia Zamoyski Trust, which belongs to the widow of Count Zygmunt Zamoyski of Poland.

Howard Street has become a flash point in Sag Harbor as longtime owners witness the expansion and renovations of residences representative of the village’s historic district and new owners seek to maximize their investments.

The Zamoyski house, purchased for $2.05 million, is a comparatively modest (for now) structure of 1,200 square feet on only a tenth of an acre, containing two bedrooms and 2.5 baths. The 1840-era house has several modern and appealing amenities—central air, hot tub, living room with a Rumford fireplace, dining room with a fireplace and French doors, and the second-floor balcony overlooks a multi-level garden and stone fountain.

No doubt the Count, had he lived, would have enjoyed it, much as he enjoyed Sag Harbor in general. Zygmunt Zamoyski was born in 1937 into a family that had been influential in Polish politics since the 16th century. During World War II, he grew up in Dorset, England, where his mother was the headmistress of the Cranborne Chase School. After attending Oxford, Count Zamoyski served in the British Navy. After leaving the military, he worked as a teacher at various schools and institutions in England “all the while cultivating a well-deserved reputation for harmless eccentricity,” according to a British newspaper account.

Immediately after the Communist regime ended in Poland, Count Zamoyski (a title he inherited from his father) went to live in Poland. There he taught English as a foreign language in a town that had been founded by his family centuries earlier, then in Warsaw. In 2005, he married an American, Patricia Grobow, and the Zamoyskis relocated to the Sag Harbor area. He spent his remaining years there, dying in November 2012, shortly before his 75th birthday.