The house that Greenport's first development built
Hartwell Avenue is one of the streets of the Friss Tract, the first real housing development in the Town of Greenport. As the town's own 1987 history tells it, William D. Friss began it in 1920 on the nine acres of Leary's Colonial Inn and the ball field known as Homestead Park, laid water mains and a sewer tied into Hudson's Aitken Avenue line, and wrote into the original deeds that nothing commercial could ever be built there. By his death in 1949 more than ninety homes stood on the tract. This one went up in 1926, six years in, a Tudor Revival on 0.21 acres that the listing calls Centennial House.
What a century left in place
The 1920s survive here in the small things: stained glass sidelights at the foyer, push button light switches, built-ins and woodwork in the living room, and a fireplace with geometric tilework in earthy tones. The kitchen is built around a six burner Wolf range and a farmhouse sink, and the dining room opens to a screened porch. Four bedrooms and a full bath take the second floor. The attic is finished, heated and cooled, with skylights, a propane fireplace and a full bath of its own, and reads as a future primary suite. Below, a full basement with a laundry room and a direct entry garage.
Half a block past the line
The address is Hudson, the tax bill is Greenport: the house sits just outside the city limits, exempt from city taxes, with annual taxes a little over eight thousand dollars, yet Warren Street is a walk and the Amtrak station five minutes away. Bluestone walks and patio, a natural gas stone fireplace outdoors, and a manicured hedge along the street close the property off from all of it.
