Anthony Newell Tyson of East Hampton, an interior designer who also worked in construction, real estate, filmmaking, and antiques dealing, died on Feb. 27 of vascular dementia and kidney disease. He was 78 and had been ill for five years.
Mr. Tyson lived all over the world while growing up, from Bernardsville, N.J., to Jamaica, from Nassau in the Bahamas to Paris, Switzerland, and Hawaii, but he spent most of the summers of his youth living with his grandparents Ethel and Newell Ward on Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton.
While here, he could also be found with his aunt and uncle, Carolyn and Jimmy Tyson of Amagansett. He worked alongside his uncle to rebuild the houses in the Tyson family compound, learning all about woodworking and construction in the process. His aunt inspired him to open an antiques store in Quogue while he was still a teenager, said his wife, Lori Marsden, and daughter, Julia Tyson, both of whom survive him.
“From there he went on to have a successful career in interior design after his own SoHo loft was featured in Architectural Digest,” they wrote. The interiors of East Hampton Village Hall and the Racquet and Tennis Club of New York City were among his projects.
“He was a fantastic dancer, storyteller, jokester,” and he was fluent in French. One of East Hampton Town’s earliest surfers, he returned here with a surfboard after a year in Hawaii with his parents in the mid-1950s and “decided to try the waves in Montauk,” they added.
Mr. Tyson enjoyed boating and travel, and was a lover of animals.
He was born on March 2, 1944, in New York City to Mark Tyson and the former Rosemary Ward. He attended Proctor Academy in New Hampshire and went on to Boston University and Columbia University.
He married Ms. Marsden on July 11, 1987. She and their daughter both live in East Hampton.
A service for Mr. Tyson will be held on March 25 at 11 a.m. at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Bridgehampton.
