The Story
Wilson Eyre took the commission in 1903, two years after he helped found House and Garden magazine, and by 1904 Meadowcroft stood on what had been a 120-acre meadow above Quantuck Creek. The client was Theodore E. Conklin of the T.E. Conklin Brass and Copper Company on Lafayette Street in Manhattan, around the corner from the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Tiffany designed the lamps and sconces and worked Conklin's own brass and bronze into them. The house Eyre drew was an English country cottage at estate scale, and it is the last of his Long Island houses still standing. Today that means 6.9 bulkheaded acres at the head of the creek, eight bedrooms in some 9,500 square feet, a waterside pool and spa, a tennis court, and a guest cottage. It appears in Houses of the Hamptons, 1880-1930, and an entire book, Michael McKenzie's Meadowcroft, was commissioned to document it.
