Our Houses: A Chronology

1649: Old House, Cutchogue, built for Anna Budd and Benjamin Horton in Medieval English style brought to East End by 17th-Century settlers. House descends into Wickham family, until forfeited after Revolution; converted to a barn in 19th Century and restored for Southold tercentenary.

1652: English shipping merchant Nathaniel Sylvester purchases Shelter Island for 1,600 pounds of sugar and builds a manor there. Destroyed by fire, it is rebuilt in 1733 by grandson and last lord of the manor, Brinley Sylvester.

1680: Van Nostrand-Starkins House, Roslyn, built in medieval English tradition, with steep pitched roof and white oak framing. Probably Nassau County's earliest surviving house.

1690: Manor of St. George, Mastic, rises on 20,000 acres on a bluff overlooking Great South Bay -- Col. William (Tangier) Smith's reward for service to the British Crown. Residence changes over the years; a new house was built in 1810 to replace one destroyed during Revolution. Smiths live on manor until 1854.

1692: Construction begins on Sagtikos Manor, West Bay Shore, later called ``one of the most distinguished houses in the United States.'' Built in three sections: one between 1692 and 1697 by Stephanus Van Cortlandt, another circa 1772 by Isaac Thompson, a third by Frederick Diodati Thompson in 1905 under supervision of Riverhead architect Isaac Green.

1720: William Floyd Estate, Mastic. Compound occupied by eight generations of Floyds, including William, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Dynasty begins with Nicholl Floyd, who builds shingled wood-frame house. After Revolution, Floyd enlarges house. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison visit in 1791.

1738: Raynham Hall, Oyster Bay Hamlet, home to generations of Townsends, including merchant Samuel Townsend. British occupy five-bay center-hall salt box during Revolution.

1767: Joseph Lloyd Manor House, Lloyd Harbor, completed by Connecticut housewright Abner Osborn. Lloyd descended from James Lloyd, first lord of the manor of Queens Village.

1781: Quaker farmer Richard Kirk builds Cedarmere, Roslyn Harbor. Later home to poet and publisher William Cullen Bryant, who in 1865 commissions architect and artist Frederick Copley to build cottage with overhanging pitched roof, bay windows and pinnacles at each gable.

1814: Brooklyn Heights, ``the first suburb,'' created with establishment of regular ferry service from Manhattan.

1820: Conklin House, Greenport. Considered an American ``cottage temple,'' a sign that even humble domestic structures, not just public buildings, could borrow architectural elements from Greek temple form.

1837: Completion of Cleveland-Charnews House, Southold, one of LI's earliest architect-designed houses. Created and built by William D. Cochran with segmental-arched dormers that were probably not in pattern books of carpenters of the day.

1847: Deepwells, Saint James, Greek Revival country house built for Joel L.G. Smith, descended from the Smiths of Smithtown and a founder of the Saint James Episcopal Church. NYC's ``reform'' mayor, William J. Gaynor, later acquires house, lives there until his death in 1913.

1864: James W. Beekman's manor, The Cliffs, completed in Mill Neck. Arguably, first of the 1,000 great country houses built across Long Island between 1864 and 1940.

1869: Department-store magnate A.T. Stewart purchases 7,000 acres of Hempstead Plains to launch unprecedented planned community for employees. Architect John Kellum oversees design and construction -- homes, stores and carriage drives surrounding 30-acre park with hotel. Calls it Garden City.

1884: Sagamore Hill, Cove Neck. Having spent childhood summers in Oyster Bay, future President Theodore Roosevelt commissions Queen Anne-style house for its proximity to hunting, fishing and hiking.

1884: Architect Stanford White marries Bessie Springs Smith, daughter of Judge Lawrence Smith of Smithtown, and purchases house and land in neighboring Saint James. Remodels original farmhouse in 1886, 1892 and 1902. Called Box Hill, summer cottage includes pebble-dashed stucco walls and elaborate neo-colonial detail; eclectic interiors include walls covered with split bamboo.

1892: Painter William Merritt Chase launches an art ``school on the sands'' in Shinnecock Hills; architects McKim, Mead & White design his nearby Shingle Style house.

1897: Construction begins on Bayberry Point Houses, Islip, experiment in cooperative living among the wealthy. Planned by sugar magnate H.O. Havemeyer, who digs canal and constructs bridge between the Bayberry Point peninsula in Great South Bay and the 10 summer residences. Moorish-style stucco homes designed by Forest Hills Gardens architect Grosvenor Atterbury.

1899: Construction begins on Harbor Hill, Roslyn residence of Clarence Mackay, perhaps the most important of LI's country houses. On Katherine Mackay's orders, architect Stanford White designs sumptuous but severe style. Final cost: $781,483, plus art, outbuildings, landscaping and library remodeling; down the tubes in 1947 when house is demolished.

1902: Planned community of Belle Terre opens east of Port Jefferson. ``Club colony'' of upper and middle income homes developed by Dean Alvord, who built Brooklyn's Prospect Park South.

1906: Westbury House, Old Westbury. Inspired by stately 18th-Century English Georgian houses and designed for John S. Phipps, son of financier and Carnegie Steel founder Henry Phipps. Now Old Westbury Gardens.

1910: Construction begins on George McKesson Brown estate, Coindre Hall, Lloyd Harbor. Elaborate chateauesque residence by architect Clarence Luce marked by conical-capped towers, slender channeled chimneys and elaborate window. Loses mansion in 1929 stock market crash.

1912: Creation of Forest Hills Gardens, designed for Russell Sage Foundation as model village of lower income housing by Grosvenor Atterbury; Olmstead brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed Central Park, are landscape architects.

1913: Eagle's Nest, Centerport, completed. Palatial Spanish Baroque country home of William K. Vanderbilt II begins as modest retreat. Extensively remodeled in 1926, including addition of Marine Museum; 1935 phase includes wing in memory of Vanderbilt son killed in 1933 auto accident.

1914: Killenworth, George D. Pratt's Glen Cove country home, judged ``best house of the year'' by Country Life in America magazine. Later serves as country retreat for Russian delegation to United Nations, complete with theories of retreat-as-spy nest.

1917: Oheka, Otto H. Kahn's estate, built in Cold Spring Harbor. Designed by Delano & Aldrich, considered largest private residence in New York -- 62,000 square feet, 72 rooms, 25 baths on 500 acres.

1918: Coe Hall, Oyster Bay, built for William Robertson Coe and wife, Mai Rogers, daughter of Standard Oil-founder Henry Huddleston Rogers. Centerpiece of Planting Fields, grand 350-acre estate which evolved into horticultural showplace.

1924: Construction begins on Caumsett, Lloyd Harbor home of Marshall Field III, philanthropist, publisher and grandson of Chicago merchant. Taken with great Georgian country houses of his English youth, Field asks architect John Russell Pope to create American version. Polo stables, winter and summer cottages, working dairy farm included in 1,500 acre complex.

1928: Manhasset's Munsey Park development opens. Created for Metropolitan Museum with strict architectural controls, deed restrictions and streets named for famous American artists.

1929: Glendon Allvine house, Long Beach. Stark white stucco building designed by architect Warren Matthews. Probably first Modernist house on Long Island, if not East Coast.

1936: Frank Lloyd Wright begins Great Neck residence of controversial publisher Ben Rehburn. Alfred Levitt, who would later help build Levittown, takes 10-month leave from family firm to watch legendary architect work.

1947: Levittown, the community that would epitomize postwar 'burbs, opens. First capes rent for $60 a month.

1949: First Levitt ranches for sale -- 41/2 rooms, 800 square feet, $7,990. Between 1947 and 1951, Abraham Levitt & Sons builds 17,447 houses using assembly-line production.

1965: Robert Gwathmey House and Studio, Amagansett, built by architect, three years out of Yale School of Architecture. Example of house as ``object in space,'' where house and smaller studio command surrounding space. Spawns countless vacation home imitations along East Coast.

1980: Sam's Creek Development. Bridgehampton architect Norman Jaffe wins Archi Award for four flat-roofed Modernist buildings that blend into potato-field setting.

1983: Mecox Field Houses, Bridgehampton. Architect Robert A.M. Stern sets group of homes around serpentine road, in style of 19th-Century suburban subdivision.

1983: Toad Hall, East Hampton. Laid out on land-to-sea axis, complex International Style house appears to be made of multiple geometric forms tied by encompassing sunscreen frame. Postmodern design by Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel in conjunction with Bruce Nagel, one of most celebrated American houses of the '80s.

SOURCES: ``AIA Architectural Guide to Nassau and Suffolk Counties,'' Long Island by the American Institute of Architects, Long Island Chapter, and The Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, 1992, Dover Publications.