Skip to main content

Brooks Park House Called Nationally Significant

Thu, 03/12/2020 - 00:16

Trust seeks to save AbEx artists’ Springs enclave

When East Hampton Town first acquired the Springs property that belonged to the artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park, a studio there looked as if the artists had just stepped away.
Doug Kuntz

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has asked the East Hampton Town Board to halt the planned demolition of the Springs house and studios of the Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park.     

In a letter read to the board by Robert Strada, the executive director of Peconic Historic Preservation, Katherine Malone-France, the trust’s chief preservation officer, asked that the town “work with interested parties to develop a revised plan for the long-term future of this nationally significant site.”             

Brooks and Park, who were married, were an important part of the midcentury artists community here. Ms. Malone-France stated that the national trust considers their property “an exceptional example of an environment that reflects the artists’ domestic and creative lives and contributes to the Town of East Hampton’s larger history of being an artists’ enclave.” Brooks died in 1992 and Park in 2010.     

The town bought their 11-acre property on Neck Path for $1.1 million in 2013, initially as open space and a link to nearby trails, using the community preservation fund. After it was determined that the house and studios had remained unchanged since the artists’ deaths, residents formed the Brooks Park Heritage Project and lobbied for preserving the buildings as a community arts space. The structures were designated a town historic landmark in 2014.     

Since a town purchase in 2013, the Brooks Park house in Springs has been left to the elements. Doug Kuntz photo

 

In 2017, the town entered into an agreement with Peconic Historic Preservation to allow use of the property by a not-for-profit after the town rehabilitated the buildings. Last year, however, the town’s property management committee recommended instead that the buildings be demolished, citing their poor condition, and the board voted in November to authorize the Department of Land Acquisition and Management to seek bids for the demolition. (The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, also in Springs, has offered to relocate one structure, a shed that functioned as the couple’s guest house, to its own site, on Springs-Fireplace Road.)     

Ms. Malone-France wrote that demolition “would be contrary to the purpose of the Town of East Hampton’s local preservation ordinance, which states, ‘The protection, enhancement, and perpetuation of landmarks and historic districts is necessary to promote the economic, cultural, educational, and general welfare of the public.’ ”     

“Given the property’s historic significance and cultural importance to understanding East Hampton’s heritage,” she continued, the Trust urges the town “to work with interested parties to develop a sustainable long-term plan for the rehabilitation and management of the Brooks Park historic landmark.”     

Mr. Strada told the town board that Peconic Historic Preservation “is indeed one of those ‘interested parties.’ ”     

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc replied that the board was acting on the property management committee’s recommendation. The structures, he said, are badly deteriorated, “and without some support of a viable plan for managing going forward, and with no movement in terms of progress, the property sits, after seven years, as an attractive nuisance and causes great potential liability for the town.”     

Nonetheless, said the supervisor, “If there is a path forward, I personally am all ears.” . . . “If the National Historic Trust wants to get involved and put the weight of the Trust behind this effort, and if there are other individuals who want to come forward and help out, we would certainly embrace that.” The town is willing to help, he said, but “if there isn’t the backing and support within the community and organizations beyond, then it becomes much more difficult for us to preserve these buildings.”     

Sara Kautz, preservation director of Preservation Long Island, lent her organization’s support, recommending “securing and stabilizing the Brooks Park structures as soon as possible” and “developing a more robust program of community outreach to better engage residents and stakeholders,” referring to custodial agreements that allow public-private partnerships for restoration work. The community preservation fund, she said, “is a fabulous way to leverage private money investing in rehabilitating and restoring historic sites.”     

Mr. Strada said he would meet with Paul Edmondson, president and chief executive officer of the National Trust, as early as this week, and report back to the board. 

Villages

Owl's Death Prompts Call for Bird-Friendly Building

Window strikes kill up to a billion birds annually and rank up there with cats and habitat destruction as the leading causes of recent steep declines. After the recent death of a much-watched Eurasian eagle-owl that was set loose from the Central Park Zoo, a bill calling for bird-friendly building measures has been revived in the New York Assembly and Senate.

Mar 28, 2024

Architect’s Descendants Visit East Hampton Gem

Michele L’Hommedieu Hofmann had no idea until retiring last fall and starting to research her family history how prominent a role her great-great-grandfather James H. L’Hommedieu had played in Long Island’s late-19th-century architecture. On a trip to New York that included a stop at an East Hampton house he designed for Robert Southgate Bowne, a founder of the Maidstone Club and first president of the Long Island Rail Road, she and her family got a crash course in L’Hommedieu’s work.

Mar 28, 2024

Item of the Week: Gardiner Family Gossip From 1889

On July 16, 1889, while staying in Lenox, Mass., Sarah Diodati Gardiner Thompson wrote to her daughter Sarah Thompson Gardiner, who was vacationing at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Family news was top of mind.

Mar 28, 2024

Your support for The East Hampton Star helps us deliver the news, arts, and community information you need. Whether you are an online subscriber, get the paper in the mail, delivered to your door in Manhattan, or are just passing through, every reader counts. We value you for being part of The Star family.

Your subscription to The Star does more than get you great arts, news, sports, and outdoors stories. It makes everything we do possible.