Updated 1902 Hamptons House on Picturesque Lane Sells for $25 Million

Quimby Lane in Bridgehampton, N.Y., is one of the best addresses in the Hamptons. It’s a quiet, peaceful road with no through streets, lined with old houses, leading down to Sagaponack Pond. Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has a house on the pond, with ocean views. Next door to him, a teardown sold in 2019 for $26 million.

This property, which is not on the pond, also sold in 2019, for $7.1 million, to Chris Mitchell and Pilar Guzmán, both former Condé Nast executives. (He’s a former publisher of Vanity Fair and she a former editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveler.) With the expertise of local architect Anne Sherry, the veteran media execs did a complete renovation and restoration, which included lifting the house and moving it, digging a new foundation, and then adding on so that the house feels like it had expanded slowly, over time. Back in March, the couple put the property on the market asking $28.5 million; it sold in August for $25 million to an anonymous LLC. Listing agents were Beate Moore and Frank Newbold at Sotheby’s Int’l Realty.

The original farmhouse that stood on the property was built in 1700, but it was knocked down by inventor and lightning rod dealer Edward Everett Quimby, who initially rented the house and later bought the property and 30+ surrounding acres to create a family compound.

This rambling, cedar-shingled residence, which was built in 1902 for one of the Quimby relations and presides over 2.3 manicured acres on the corner of Quimby Lane and Ocean Road, was looking tired 120 years later. It had last been renovated in the 1980s and looked it. Mitchell and Guzmán told Bloomberg that the previous owners “took every part that was historically authentic out of the house and put in the plastic, hollow-core door version that still read ‘historic’ but was still every bit 1980s imitation.”

The serial renovators, who’ve worked in the Hamptons and Brooklyn, were up for the challenge. They added on a wing, taking the house, which was originally 4,700 square feet, with 7 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, to 12,000 square feet, with 10 beds and 11.5 baths. They added a spa, steam room, wine closet, fitness studio and home theater. Outside, they added a new 50-foot pool, an entertaining pavilion with fireplace near the tennis court, and a hornbeam allée with a 20-foot-long dining table. They also renovated the carriage house and separate studio building.

It’s all very nicely done, as evidenced by the high sale price. Although somewhere, Mr. Quimby is wondering where the lightning rods are.