Shore Cottage

Shore Cottage is a two-and-one-half-story stucco summer house with a slate roof, set on 1.7 acres at the edge of Stony Brook Harbor in Head of the Harbor. Lawrence Grant White designed it in 1913 as a guest house on his mother's Box Hill estate, and it became a wedding gift to him and his wife after their 1916 marriage. He added a north service wing around 1918. Casement windows, brick quoins, a Regency-style doorway and a screened waterside porch define the design, and the center-hall plan opens to harbor views. A board-and-batten barn that predates the house, possibly tied to an earlier shipyard, was converted by White into a stable. The property matters for its link to the Smith, White, Chanler and Emmet families, for the work of a prominent architect who later joined McKim, Mead and White, and for its European-influenced departure from the shingled houses typical of the harbor. It remains largely intact.