The Story
Garden Street begins at the corner of Main, at the front door of the 1845 Benjamin Huntting II mansion, the Greek Revival pile a whaling fortune built that now houses the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. The Custom House stands a few doors in: Henry Packer Dering, customs master by Washington's appointment, ran one of New York's two custom houses from it, and with Benjamin Huntting the elder dispatched Sag Harbor's first whaler to Brazil. This is the block where the village's whaling money lived, in the heart of the historic village core.
No. 55 dates to about 1850, the working end of that economy: a shingled cottage with a front porch, two fireplaces sharing one double-sided brick chimney, and 1,315 square feet on a tenth of an acre.
Inside
The interior was freshly furnished for the season: white walls and deep sofas around the brick hearth, a beamed kitchen with an island, two bedrooms upstairs (one with its own small fireplace), a bath and a half, and a blue-papered powder room that is the one unrestrained moment in the house. Out back, a landscaped yard for dinner outside, an outdoor shower, and a one-car garage, which in the village is its own kind of luxury.
The Month
It books August 1 through 21 at $20,000, furnished and fully stocked, through Flora Veitch Delavalle and Christopher Covert of Modlin Group Hamptons. The marinas are a block away, Main Street's shops and restaurants just past them, Havens Beach a mile out. December, if you want the village to yourself, is $5,000.
