In 2013, East Hampton Village in New York passed a law that protects the area's many historic frame houses and encourages—and incentivizes—the restoration of these buildings. While East Hampton prohibits building two houses on a small lot, if a property contains one of two dozen designated landmarks built between 1700 and 1850, the owner can keep the original house and a second house there as well build real estate an exception to the mandate. Now the law gives these houses monument status and protects them from demolition. That's exactly the case with the historic Hiram Sanford House on Egypt Lane, a Cape Cod-style home built in 1740.
The century-old, small, frame-built Hiram Sanford House was once home to the man who operated the Pantigo Windmill, and the site has been passed down for generations. It was dilapidated and needed urgent repairs. The house was purchased in 2017 by a former entertainment executive who decided to renovate the Hiram Sanford House and build a new building. The owner commissioned New York-based Ammor Architecture, with whom he has worked since 2008, including on the Abernathy Residence in Palm Springs. The home was recently listed by Saunders for just under $6 million, making it an exceptionally rare opportunity to own both a piece of history and an incredibly modern home.
Roderick Cruz
Located on the 0.8-acre property is the historic one-bedroom home, which has been preserved with original period details such as a Rumford cooking fireplace, exposed beams, wide hardwood floors and windows. Now it serves as an ancillary property for the newly built modern house, which was completed in 2024 and consists of eight converted shipping containers. It features three bedrooms, three full bathrooms and one half bathroom spread over two levels, with a rooftop lounge and an infinity pool and spa. The stark contrast between old and new was intentional, and the property, nicknamed “A Tale of Two Houses,” even won a 2024 Merit Award from AIA Brooklyn.
“The owner wanted to build something that would create a dialogue with the historic house,” says Thomas Morbitzer, partner at Ammor Architecture Robb report. “Back then, the historic house was built in the most efficient way that houses could be built at the time. We wanted to find out what is an efficient way to build a house today, so we chose modified shipping containers as the prefabrication method and created something unique.”
Morbitzer and his co-partner at Ammor, Goil Amornvivat, wanted the new house to almost frame the historic house. To this end, they created a long glass pavilion that houses the kitchen and dining room. It is equipped with windows and offers a perfect view of the pool, garden, pond and lawn. Other prefabricated components of the house include a Belgian-made staircase and the kitchen, trying to keep this idea from the outside to the interior.
Roderick Cruz
“We describe it as a purposeful contrast because there are many different shingle-style homes in East Hampton, but the area also has a very unique heritage of modern homes,” he says. “This is a conversation about the city and the neighborhood in one place.”
The newer home features a modern design with glass and steel, but also offers warm interiors with wood paneling and wood accents. The rooftop terrace is lined with tall grass to remain in keeping with the ecology of the Hamptons landscape. This feature serves as nature's cocoon when you're up there enjoying an outdoor meal or sunbathing. The interiors of the Hiram Sanford House include exposed wooden beams from the original house, rifle stock posts buried in drywall and unearthed during restoration, and even original upstairs floors. Ammor tried to replicate the second level's wide plank floors on the main level to make it seem like they, too, had been there a long time. Before the restoration, the house looked like a “dilapidated dollhouse,” with chunky 20th-century design (think red shag carpet and lavender walls) and old mechanics.
“Working on the house was definitely a mystery,” Morbitzer says. “What was really fun about this project, especially because it was a restoration of a house, as small as it was, the detailing was very intense. I feel like we really brought it back to something peaceful and calm, almost like we weren't there at all, but it was quite an effort to achieve that. It feels very modern because it’s so historic.”
Click here for more photos of the Hiram Stanford House.
