Cottage to Become Museum
Work has begun to restore the mill cottage on the 1648 Lion Gardiner home lot, on James Lane in East Hampton, to its appearance in the 1880s. Once restored, the structure is to become the Gardiner Mill Cottage Gallery, a museum housing landscape paintings depicting East Hampton in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The renovation of the timber-frame saltbox follows the Town of East Hampton’s October 2014 purchase of the 3.7-acre Gardiner home lot, which includes the 1804 Gardiner windmill, using money from the community preservation fund. In December of that year, the town and Village of East Hampton, which had requested the purchase, signed an agreement giving the village sole responsibility for the lot.
The project at hand is to restore the mill cottage to its appearance when Jonathan Thompson Gardiner renovated it, by removing nonhistorical additions from the 1920s and later, including porches and dormers. An 1880 porch will be reconstructed, as will a kitchen wing. The cottage’s gross floor area will be reduced from 3,547 square feet to 1,471 square feet.
Gardiner rented the cottage for the summer season. In the early 20th century, the cottage was known as the home of the artist Percy Moran, a nephew of the painter and printmaker Thomas Moran.
Bob Hefner, the village’s director of historic services, said last week that he expects the work to be completed and the museum to open by next summer. Speaking before the village’s zoning board of appeals last fall, he called the museum “an appropriate use for this property that was preserved as a historic landscape as Lion Gardiner’s home lot.”
The plan required a special permit from the Z.B.A. because the cottage is a pre-existing and nonconforming structure in a residential district. Variance relief to make alterations and eliminate nonhistorical components of the building, and from required setbacks and parking spaces, was required. The village’s design review board also had to approve the plans.
Pavement in the front lawn is to be removed to restore a grass setting between the mill cottage and the windmill, Mr. Hefner told the Z.B.A. last fall, and the existing driveway from Maidstone Lane will remain and lead to four parking spaces directly behind the cottage. Paved areas are to be reduced by 2,000 square feet.
The East Hampton Historical Society is to be the museum’s curator, with the exhibition made possible by a grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. The grant is for the acquisition of part of the collection of the Wallace Gallery in East Hampton.
Terry Wallace of that gallery wrote in an email on Monday that the foundation has purchased several paintings for the museum’s initial collection, and he has donated five more. The latter group includes paintings depicting Georgica Pond, a twilight view of the Gardiner mill and cottage in 1945, a painting he said was a possible study for John Ferguson Weir’s “Beach at East Hampton,” and “an extremely rare view of the Woodhouse water garden in full bloom.”
“I am excited that the Town and the Village of East Hampton are making this museum a reality,” Mr. Wallace said. “It will greatly enhance the preservation of our history to the community we all love.”