An Elizabethan-Style East Hampton Playhouse Is for Sale

The great room, looking toward the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ. Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

There are houses we build to live in, with all their dull necessities, and then there are “follies,” whimsical outbuildings built specifically for pleasure. Marie Antoinette escaped from the back of Versailles to her faux farmhouse. British landowners dotted their estates with tiny castles. And in 1917, a Gilded Age family that lived on 50 acres of prime East Hampton land built the Playhouse behind their mansion.

The Elizabethan Revival building was erected as a birthday present for the family’s 16-year-old daughter and has a stage at the end of a 75-foot-long, half-timber-style hall heated by a massive stone fireplace and presided over by a pipe organ and gargoyles playing cymbals and drums. During the day, light streams through grids of high leaded-glass windows. At night, there are sconces and candelabras.

Never designed as a place to live, the Playhouse is now the last surviving remnant of the estate of an East Hampton matriarch sometimes referred to as the town’s Medici or First Lady, owing to the money she poured into the village: She restored an 18th-century school, built the community center known as Guild Hall, and underwrote the library. Never spotted without a hat and, later, without rows of pearls hiding her double chin, Mary Woodhouse first came to the Hamptons on a wave of money that followed the new train line. She arrived on the arm of her husband in 1895 for a visit to his uncle’s place — an 1893 shingled mansion known as Greycroft, which is down the street from the area’s first golf club, Maidstone, founded in 1891. The Woodhouse money came from banking and a partnership with Marshall Field’s, and the younger Woodhouses deployed it to buy 50 acres across from their uncle’s place, where they built the Fens, a 1903 shingled mansion with a wraparound porch, designed by the local architect who created Grey Gardens.

The Playhouse was just one outbuilding on the estate and would have been the preferred spot to host parties, explains Gary Lawrance, author of Houses of the Hamptons, 1880–1930, who runs the account Mansions of the Gilded Age. While the Fens and other turn-of-the-century mansions could be formal warrens of small rooms, the huge floor plate of the Playhouse’s great room makes it feel free and loose. “These were rec rooms or fun rooms, rooms to be casual in,” Lawrance says. “It’s always fun to have a little pavilion in your backyard.”

Sixteen-year-old Marjorie Woodhouse might have performed there, but within just four years, it was the site of her 1921 wedding. Twelve years after that, at the age of 32, she was killed when her second husband’s convertible skidded to avoid a truck and plunged off a wet bridge, flipping into a river. Her husband swam out, but Marjorie was pinned upside-down in the mud. It took rescuers 30 minutes to unlatch the door.

The Playhouse was once one of a handful of outbuildings on the 50-acre Woodhouse estate. "This property definitely encompasses the grandness of the Hamptons," says agent Leslie Reingold. "People travel far and wide to come here, and it’s partly because the variety of the terrain out here is immense." Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby's International Realty .

The Playhouse was once one of a handful of outbuildings on the 50-acre Woodhouse estate. "This property definitely encompasses the grandness of t... more The Playhouse was once one of a handful of outbuildings on the 50-acre Woodhouse estate. "This property definitely encompasses the grandness of the Hamptons," says agent Leslie Reingold. "People travel far and wide to come here, and it’s partly because the variety of the terrain out here is immense." Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby's International Realty .

Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby's International Realty.

Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby's International Realty.

After Marjorie’s death, her mother turned the Playhouse into a proper theater, recruiting New York dance troupes and choirs. In 1937, she donated the space to an acting school, and its company lived and worked on the estate. But when World War II drafted the actors away, the Playhouse fell back into her hands. Mary held teas there, where she was spotted in her massive hats, quoting French poetry or feeding the spools of the player pipe organ, according to a monograph on the family. She kept the Playhouse even after her practical geologist son convinced her to raze the Fens with the idea of avoiding taxes and maintenance costs. An architect helped her turn the folly into a year-round home — with a new wing that could be heated in winter, a kitchen and maid’s quarters, and a bedroom for Mary upstairs behind the pipe organ, which could be reached via a 15th-century Gothic spiral staircase imported from Europe. It’s unclear if she ever actually lived here. She eventually moved to a family home in Palm Beach full time, selling the Playhouse before her death in 1961 at age 96.

A lighting fixture in the great room. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty

The buyer was a woman who felt drawn to Mary. Like the Medici of East Hampton, Elizabeth Brockman was a preservationist and philanthropist who had helped save Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall and established the American Symphony Orchestra. She was also “pretty eccentric,” remembers her stepson, Richard. “You have to be of a certain ilk to get it as a beautiful piece of architecture. But to say ‘I want to live here,’ you have to be a little unusual.”

The Brockmans lived in the folly seasonally, letting Richard roam outside in the remnants of the Woodhouses’ formal sunken gardens or on 25 acres of the former family estate, which Mary had donated as a nature preserve abutting the golf course. Brockman threw events in line with Mary’s vision — such as a benefit for the New York Shakespeare Festival at which actors read scenes from Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew. Still, Brockman was more open to avant-garde performances than the stuffy Woodhouses had been. In 1968, she let her friend Norman Mailer use the place to film his experimental feature with D.A. Pennebaker, Maidstone, which features a party held under the great room’s timbers.

Her stepson eventually inherited the building. A professor, an author, and a psychiatrist, Richard Brockman and his wife, the documentary filmmaker Mirra Bank, used the enormous space to found the Playhouse Project in 2005, inviting local students for free classical-music courses and performances. Meanwhile, the couple turned the building into a more practical home and a summer rental, building a swimming pool and charging $210,000 for the summer. Central heating and a new addition off the kitchen — a sun-filled breakfast nook — made it easy for them to decide where to spend their quarantine in 2020. But now, they’re no longer hosting the kinds of big parties that justify the expense, and they’ve been spending more time abroad.

“I certainly have ambivalent feelings about putting it on the market,” says Richard. “It’s majestic and of another era, another world. It defies the McMansion-ification of the Hamptons.”

Architect Robert A.M. Stern, who renovated Greycroft, the family estate across the street, called the Playhouse “the most perfectly preserved of the Woodhouse family properties.” Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

Still, the current owners made updates that helped them rent it out for the summer. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty

The architecture might have been inspired by homes in Maidstone, Kent, the town where early settlers of East Hampton had come from, but it was common for Gilded Age families to bring back architectural ideas from tours abroad, says author Gary Lawrance. Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

The building centers on a 75-foot-long great room where the Woodhouses held plays and parties; the next owners carried on the tradition but allowed for more avant-garde performers, including Norman Mailer, who filmed part of his experimental feature here. Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

In a nook of the great room off a terrace, Mary Woodhouse preferred to host teas, according to her friend Enez Whipple, who led the Guild Hall and wrote about Woodhouse for a monograph on the family. Photo: Chris Foster / Sotheby’s International Realty

In 1953, Mary Woodhouse added livable spaces on either end of the great room. Up these stairs is the pipe organ, which sits in front of a space she turned into her bedroom. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty

A cozy nook off the great room holds the fireplace that was once responsible for heating the entire building. The current owners added central heat. Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

A bedroom on the other side of the great room, off the kitchen, which Mary Woodhouse might have reserved for her maid. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty

A row of elaborately painted doors hides a bathroom and closet on the ground floor. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty

A practical kitchen was added later, then updated, but still retains a leaded glass window. Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

A media room or office off the kitchen leads to a new addition. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty

The Brockmans helped make the building feel like a year-round residence by adding a cheerier dining area. The wood paneling in the sunroom came from the last of the estate’s old growth elms, which had fallen to Dutch Elm disease. Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

Walled in copper, this ingenious addition won an award from the American Institute of Architects. Photo: Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty

A patio with a store of firewood for cozy days in the great room. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty

A view of the estate from what was once a manicured sunken garden. Mary Woodhouse at one point employed seven gardeners, and her husband’s aunt across the street created the country’s first Japanese-inspired garden, modeled after the memories of a local whaler who had been there. Photo: Chris Foster for Sotheby’s International Realty