Briar Patch Road Historic District

Briar Patch Road is a narrow, unpaved lane running west toward Georgica Pond in the village of East Hampton. Along it sits a small group of seven contributing buildings, six houses and a garage, built between 1897 and 1932. Artists drawn to the area's wooded, private setting built many of them as seasonal retreats. Early residents included painters Robert and Amanda Sewell, sculptor John Heywood Roudebush, playwright Augustus Thomas and New York architect James Lawrence Aspinwall. Most buildings are shingled frame houses. Several, including the Roudebush and Aspinwall houses, have modified saltbox forms recalling East Hampton's eighteenth-century architecture. The 1897 Howard Ogden Wood House is a Shingle style example. The last major house, built in 1931-1932 for surgeon Shephard Krech and designed by Arthur C. Jackson, is a fine Colonial Revival mansion. Other East Hampton artists' properties exist elsewhere, but this is the only surviving concentration still in its historic setting.