Support Southampton History Museum with An Outsider's View

“An Insider’s View,” an interior tour of architecturally and historically significant homes hosted by Southampton History Museum, has taken place for the past ten years. This year, the museum will carry on the beloved tradition, while shifting with COVID times.

“An Outsider’s View,” a tour of some of Southampton’s most beautiful gardens and landscapes, will be held in its place on Saturday, September 12, from 1–4 p.m., followed by a Champagne reception from 4:30–6 p.m.

“With designs ranging from a structured formal garden of clipped hedges and detailed gates to a whimsical waterfront cottage garden bursting with flowers and native flora, each setting will provide an interesting study of the interplay between the landscape and the home’s architecture and history,” reads a statement from the history museum.

Homes along the tour will include the historied gardens of the Taft Compound, Captain Daniel Halsey House, The Orchard, Camp at Cedar Crest and Port of Missing Men. These gardens, many which boast water views, are located throughout Southampton Village and North Sea.

At the Taft Compound, which dates back to the late 1800s, guests will find a historic property that has been preserved and enhanced, surrounding a Queen Anne style home. Visitors will observe “a property that consists of three separate residences that all share a common lawn and hedge, which further accentuates the grand scale of the space and its long vistas,” says the history museum.

Captain Daniel Halsey House, built in 1742, was home to the first retail nursery and garden design store on the South Fork. The house is currently framed by two copper beeches from its nursery days. In the front yard, guests will find a 100-year old weeping hemlock and a southern magnolia planted as a six-foot living memorial days after 9/11.

At The Orchard, guests will discover the astonishing beauty of the property, behind its elegant gates and beyond its hedgerow. The classic shingle-style home looks out on lush lawns filled with hydrangeas, hornbeams and crepe myrtles. As well as the 32 apple trees on the property that the estate is named after.

Camp at Cedar Crest, a place known for “fishing, clamming, picnicking and doing nothing at all,” was originally a kit house, according to the museum. It was displayed in the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City before being moved to its current location. The waterfront property also offers a breathtaking view at sunset. From a small bridge that leads to the beach, guests will look out onto New Suffolk and Robbins Island.

Port of Missing Men in the Cow Neck section of North Sea overlooks Scallop Pond. “It was once the vacation retreat of Standard Oil heir Colonel Henry Huddleston Rogers Jr., who had architect John Russell Pope create the Colonial Revival house, taking his inspiration from the cottage built on the spot in 1661 for Captain Jackomiah Scott,” according to the museum.

Guests will walk through the entry court to the back terrace. Be sure to look for the “1661” above the door of the original Scott home. The property includes a number of structures, including a chapel. Each of the structures sits on a landscape of open fields along with native beech, locust and cherry trees.

The Champagne reception takes place at the Port of Missing Men and is hosted by Sant Ambroeus Restaurant. Proceeds benefit the Southampton History Museum’s education programs.

Tickets are $150 in advance and $175 the day of event. To RSVP, call 631-283-2494 or visit southamptonhistory.org. Tickets may be picked up or purchased on the day of the tour as early as 10:30 a.m. at The Thomas Halsey Homestead, at 249 South Main Street in Southampton.