Living with antiques: Rosemary Lodge in Water Mill, New York

Magazine Antiques, July, 2000 by Mary Anne Hunting

Between 1903 and 1909 the Reverend Rose focused on the three rooms on the third floor--the Dutch Room (formerly called the Oratory), the "Eagle's Nest" (also called the East Room), and the North Room. The Dutch Room gained its new name in 1906 after a wallpaper frieze of blue Dutchmen was installed. The furniture was all stained to match the black-stained cypress wainscoting. The curtains and bedspread (no longer surviving) were made from a blue-and-white chintz once owned by Rose's grandmother. The other two rooms were furnished with green wallpaper and rugs, utilitarian white-painted furniture, and chintz curtains. They had more built-in cabinetry than any of the other rooms, some of it rebuilt fmm earlier pieces. For example, Rose built into the Eagle's Nest a "new oottage set" that had originally been purchased for the first floor in 1885.

For more than a century Rosemary Lodge has fulfilled a creative impulse for its owners. For the Reverend Rose it was always a work in progress, a place where he could relax during his summer vacation while immersing himself in his passion for woodworking. "The cottage will never be finished as long as I live," he used to say The current owners, who have spent almost as many years at Rosemary Lodge as the Reverend Rose did, have given equally to it. Following Rose's example, these two architects have nourished the spirit of the house while adding a distinct vitality of their own, so that today, in the words of Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), Rosemary Lodge still reaches "the highest beauty of which domestic architecture is capable--that of individual expression." [34]

MARY ANNE HUNTING writes frequently about architecture and the decorative arts.

(1.) The Rose family had been on Long Island since the mid-seventeenth century, but the property was not purchased until 1730, when Zacheus Rose (1700-1760) acquired it. It descended to Stephen Rose (1741-1806), then to his son Stephen Rose (1788-1867), and then to his son Henry Martyn Rose (1823-1906). For more about the early history of the Rose family on Long Island, see George Rogers Howell, The Early History of Southampton, L. I., New York, with Genealogies, 2nd ad. (Albany, New York, 1887), pp. 367-370; Peter Ross, A History of Long Island than Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, vol. 3 (Lewis Publishing Company, New York, 1903), pp. 194-195; and Helen C. Rose, "Life of Rev. Henry T. Rose," 1936, p. 3 (Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts).

(2.) Plumbing, heating, and wiring were discreetiy modernized; a basement was added; the house was turned 180 degrees to take better advantage of the sun; and a front entrance and porches to the east and west of the kitchen were added.

(3.) Rose, "Life of Rev. Henry T. Rose," pp. 3-4.

(4.) The creation of Rosemary Lodge was a financial stretch for the small-town minister, who by 1916 had spent $6,582 ($103,600 in today's terms) on building it, according to his manuscript "Cost of the Cottage," 1884-1916, which is appended to Rose's diary (seen. 5).