What’s old is new, goes the cliché, but it’s also an adage that is proving true on Main Street in East Hampton Village.
At the southwest end of Main Street, Andrew and Sarah Wetenhall, owners of The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., have acquired the historic Hedges Inn, which was built by John D. Hedges and is on the National Register of Historic Places, and an outpost of the storied Swifty’s restaurant has opened there. Main Street’s tiny Hook School and Town House buildings recently saw pop-ups by the luxury lifestyle brand Aerin.
LDV Hospitality is overseeing the Maidstone Hotel, after Irwin Simon, the chief executive officer of the cannabis and pharmaceutical conglomerate Tilray Brands, and the restaurateur Mayank Dwivedi acquired it in 2023. Clinton Academy is hosting “Artists in Residence,” featuring original art and artifacts from some of the country’s most acclaimed artists, names that are synonymous with East Hampton. And the Maidstone Hotel and the Baker House 1650 are offering the pre-dinner Aperitivo ritual, with drinks and light snacks. The south end of the village is palpably livelier than it has been in some time.
In the midst of this active stretch of Main Street, a historic residence has come on the market for the first time in a quarter century. The 3,230-square-foot William H. Hedges House, built in 1889 by George Eldredge with alterations made in 1946, features original woodwork, six bedrooms and four bathrooms, and timeless detailing. Located at 195 Main Street, the property faces the village green with a western view of Town Pond. Presently the only historic property for sale on Main Street, it is listed at $4.75 million.
William and Rose Hedges, natives of Kent, England, arrived in Lynn, Mass., in the 1630s. They later relocated to Southampton, and were in East Hampton by 1650, two years after its founding. “Hedges men have served East Hampton Township as Supervisor,” wrote Jeannette Edwards Rattray in “East Hampton History.” They have been town clerks, too, she wrote, and Samuel C. Hedges (1870-1952) was a village trustee, a member of the three-man board that formulated the village’s original zoning code, and president of the East Hampton Historical Society. With many farmers and whalemen among them, members of the Hedges family, she wrote, “are notable for longevity, averaging 85 years with near-centenarians not uncommon.”
In her “Up and Down Main Street: An Informal History of East Hampton and Its Old Houses,” published in 1968, Rattray wrote that the house at 195 Main Street “was built by Mrs. [Morton] Pennypacker’s father, William Hedges, as a wedding present for his son, William Huntting Hedges, when he married Julia Parsons Sherrill in 1889.”
On a recent tour, a visitor was struck by the elegance of late-19th-century interiors, the house’s high ceilings, and the artwork that fills many walls, including classic photography (the jazz singer Billie Holiday, the Yankees slugger Babe Ruth) and a poster for the Rolling Stones’ 2002-2003 world tour (fun fact: the Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards hail from Kent, England).
The property also includes a village-approved variance for a 16-by-40-foot swimming pool and a 500-square-foot second-story addition.
The listing is a co-exclusive between Compass and Douglas Elliman. “The house is quietly statuesque, in the most idyllic location,” said Laura Eisman, the listing agent with Heather Saskas at Compass. “It plants you right in the center of East Hampton hospitality, culture, and shopping, surrounded by postcard-perfect village views, all within a short distance to the ocean. The front-porch people watching, from beyond a white picket fence, just may be the best V.I.P. seat in the Hamptons.” This weekend, open houses are scheduled there on Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and Sunday from 11 to 1.