Miracle-Making at Morpurgo Manse

[caption id="attachment_57582" align="alignnone" width="800"] The staircase inside the former Morpurgo home. Courtesy Anthony Vermandois[/caption]

By Douglas Feiden

It is never easy to recapture the lost grandeur of a once-stately residence from a bygone era. And when the dwelling in question is the most reviled and ramshackle wreck in Sag Harbor — the Morpurgo House at 6 Union Street — the task of restoration and preservation becomes even tougher.

But that is exactly what developer Mitch Winston has set out to do: Secure, save and salvage the 3,900-square-foot home, return it to its original form visually and architecturally, replicate some of its obliterated 19^th century elements, and attempt, both gingerly and lovingly, an historic, top-to-bottom rehabilitation.

[caption id="attachment_57581" align="alignright" width="508"] The entrance to the former Morpurgo house on Union Street. Courtesy Anthony Vermandois[/caption]

For the first time, Mr. Winston and his two equity partners — who won a public auction for the derelict property on June 24 and then closed on the $1.325 million purchase on October 25 — outlined preliminary plans for a turnaround that would reclaim the now-scarred streetscape east of the John Jermain Memorial Library.

Amagansett-based Mr. Winston, the managing partner, and his Beverly Hills-based co-investors, attorney Mark Egerman and his son Lee Egerman, made the presentation to the Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review on Thursday, November 10. Although the proposal is still in the discussion stage, members of the panel appeared upbeat and supportive.

“We’ve been working to come up a with a great plan, and to, God willing, restore the exact view that once existed of that beautiful exterior, and to return it to what it used to look like for the village, and for us,” said the 45-year-old Mr. Winston.

Noting the substantial deterioration of the residence and how a great deal of it was “falling down,” ARB member Christopher Leonard asked the developers, “Is it your intention to preserve the footprint of that house the way it is now?”

“Yes!” the senior Mr. Egerman replied. “There are two sides of the house that I think have the greatest interest architecturally, the front of the house that faces Union Street, which is basically flat and plain, and the side of the house that faces the library.”

Unfortunately, the back of the house has literally collapsed, and a visit to the interior shows how the second and third stories have tumbled into the basement due to substantial water intrusion, he told the ARB.

“So we do intend to work very closely to maintain the current architectural features of the house, particularly the side moving up to Union Street and the side adjacent to the library,” Mr. Egerman added. “We believe those two sections are what is most important to the village, and of course, we will honor the house as it was.”

On tap is a proposed reconstruction of the existing three-story dwelling in which a new foundation, new roof and second-story rear addition would be built, according to a project description filed with the ARB. It also calls for “salvaging existing structural / architectural features wherever practically feasible.”

In briefing the board, architect Anthony Vermandois, who lives down Union Street just a block away, also discussed what he called “three big exterior changes” — slicing off an unsightly protrusion on the side of the house, creating more occupiable space by adding on to the second floor, and removing the rear portion of the wraparound porch, also to pick up lot coverage.

“There was a big surprise here,” he told the board. “This project has been floating around for about 15 years now, and generally speaking, pretty much everybody I’ve ever heard talk about it said it was headed straight for the dumpster.”

[caption id="attachment_57583" align="alignleft" width="415"] The interior of the former Morpurgo house. Courtesy Anthony Vermandois[/caption]

That conventional wisdom may have been wrong: “We’ve walked through it now, gotten it cleaned up, and have seen what we’re really dealing with, and we feel like there is really quite a bit of its architectural features that are salvageable,” the architect added. “We’re going to be at the point where, when we’re done with this, it will look like it originally did when it was new.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Winston, whose other passion is playing guitar in a group called the Band of Natural Selection, gave a progress report on what his partners and Mr. Vermandois have already accomplished in the three short weeks since the closing.

Since the village’s No. 1 priority was securing what had been an open and unsafe site, a new chain-link fence was installed, literally the day after the trio took title, Mr. Winston said.

“After that, we’ve just been clearing a lot of wet, disgusting debris out of the house, at least two or three dumpsters full of stuff,” he added.

But there are treasures in there, too: Built between 1850 and 1860, the two-and-a-half story, three-bay, Italianate-style frame residence — operated as the Lobstein Boarding House from 1870 into the early 20^th century — once boasted clapboard cladding, eyebrow windows, paired brackets and two-over-two, light wooden sash windows, according to 1994 documentation from the National Register of Historic Places.

How many of those fixtures survive and exactly how battered are they now? It wasn’t immediately clear. Most of the windows, for instance, are still boarded up, so it isn’t possible to assess how salvageable they are yet, Mr. Vermandois said. For his part, Mr. Winston isn’t taking any chances.

“For anything that has any value as it pertains to the house, we have a construction pod on site, so we’re not throwing anything away at all that has the potential for any possible repurposing or reusing, and we’re playing it safe and saving everything,” he said.

Mr. Vermandois added that any architectural features that have fallen down or are lying loose around the site or have been ripped off the walls would go into the pod until he can determine what can be salvaged. That includes brackets, shutters, interior doors, interior trims and pieces of columns.

ARB Chairman Anthony Brandt wanted to know, “Is any of the interior framing usable?”

“There are some great old timbers on the first floor and the second floor that are salvageable and that we would be leaving exposed,” Mr. Vermandois replied.

In an interview later, he said that “not everything can be salvaged.” But even features that can’t be reintegrated into the Morpurgo House can help guide its reconstruction. Consider the shutters, for instance:

“I’m not sure that they’re salvageable, but now, we will always have them so they can be documented and duplicated,” Mr. Vermandois said.

Noting that the project is at its earliest stages, architectural historian Zach Studenroth, the ARB’s historic consultant, said, “There’s a journey that lies ahead for these courageous owners, and I think it would be absolutely fascinating and important to record this process as best you can photographically, with still pictures or video or both.”

The Morpurgo House has “obviously become notorious in the village as the most challenging preservation project afoot,” Mr. Studenroth added. “And our memories are so short that 10 years from now, people can sort of forget, so I think this is an amazing project to record from a preservation perspective.”

Mr. Brandt agreed, and in a reference to the Emmy-winning TV series about remodeling, carpentry and home-improvement, he said, “You almost have a ‘This Old House’ show here, and I think the entire village would be grateful for that.”

In a follow-up interview, Mr. Vermandois said he was already recording both the wonders and the wreckage he was discovering at 6 Union Street.

“I’m carefully measuring everything in the house to document all the architectural features, and I’m photographing all the walls and every part of the house that is both visible and safely accessible,” he said. “Of course, there are some places in the house where it’s not safe for me to go.”