By E.B. Solomont

In the early 1880s, Massachusetts clergyman Rev. Henry Turbell Rose wanted to build a summer cottage, so he paid his uncle $50 for a half acre of farmland in Water Mill, N.Y.

The Hamptons, the famous Long Island vacation destination that includes Water Mill, is now one of the most expensive areas in the country. The Shingle-style home Rose built -- which is full of etchings he hand-carved into the wood paneling -- is still standing and is coming on the market. The asking price? $14.25 million.

More than 50 pieces of furniture and cabinetry built by Rose are included in the offering, according to the current owner, Thérèse Bernbach, who bought the house for $2.75 million in 2004 and spent years restoring it.

The five-bedroom, roughly 4,100-square-foot house is on the National Register of Historic Places. It retains many of its original details, but not its location: In 1985, it was moved about half a mile from Montauk Highway to Rose Hill Road, down the street from Mecox Bay.

"It's so different from going to these new houses, where everything is white and it's all glass windows," said listing agent Steven Dorn of Brown Harris Stevens.

Rose was a pastor of the John Street Congregational Church in Lowell, Mass. When he bought his land in Water Mill, the once-agricultural area was quickly filling up with vacation homes. According to the book "Houses of the Hamptons, 1880-1930," Rose hired the architect Frederick W. Stickney to design the house for $25. An amateur carpenter, Rose oversaw construction of the residence himself. The total cost was $1,350, according to the National Register.

Rose called the house Rosemary Lodge for his then-wife, Mary. Each room is clad in a different kind of wood -- ash in the living room, cherry in the dining room, sycamore in the pantry and oak in an octagonal-shaped sitting room.

Construction was completed in 1884, but Rose tinkered with interior details for decades. He built furniture and fireplace mantels and carved flowers, birds and even poems into the home's wood paneling. The sitting room, for example, contains a passage from Shakespeare that reads: "He may play the fool nowhere but in his own house." One of the dining-room carvings reads: "It's very nice to think/the world is full of meat and drink."

"Every time you stop and look, you see another little interesting carving," said Bernbach, 80. "I've always thought there has to be a secret panel somewhere -- but I've yet to find it."

Rose died in 1919, and the house changed hands several times. In the 1980s, as Montauk Highway became more congested, the owners decided to move it. After placing it on a new foundation, they added a pool and poolhouse.

Bernbach bought the house the year after the death of her husband, Paul Bernbach, whose father co-founded the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, now known as DDB. She got goosebumps when she first walked into the house, she said, because it reminded her of her childhood home, a limestone house in Brooklyn with rooms clad in different kinds of wood. She lives primarily in Brooklyn and uses the Water Mill property as a vacation home, spending summers and many winter weekends there.

As a first order of business, Bernbach enlisted her son and daughter-in-law to strip the walls of orange paint. The previous owners "were going for that Italian, burnt-orange Sienna color," she said, but "they ended up with traffic-cone orange on the walls."

In 2007, she began a roughly $1 million renovation that included redoing the kitchen and bathrooms. "Of course, it took a while because everybody was being so careful with the woodwork," said Bernbach; a particular challenge was snaking electrical wires through the walls.

Having decided to downsize, Bernbach is now reluctantly parting with the house. "I want to keep the house forever but I've decided, after much consultation with my family, that maybe the time has come," she said.

There has already been interest in Rosemary Lodge because of its history and location, Dorn said, noting that larger properties in the area have sold for $20 million and more. A Water Mill property fetched $118.5 million in 2021.

Rose documented everything related to Rosemary Lodge -- construction, decor, renovations, visitors -- in a handwritten journal that is still in the house. Bernbach plans to pass it on to the next owner. "It came to me, and I will pass it on," she said.

Write to E.B. Solomont at eb.solomont@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 09, 2025 16:00 ET (20:00 GMT)

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