Rich Cribs: Huntington Bay home Einstein visited

The Huntington Bay home on the former Wincoma estate of August Heckscher has seen a few face-lifts since its days as a dock house. Now on the market for $1.849 million, it was first home to the estate’s dockmaster, then bought by a veterinarian who renovated the rooms to turn it into a summer house.
Several years later, he had the house raised from its pilings on the beach and moved to street level, where it was put onto a brick foundation. In a privately published memoir, the vet’s daughter writes that in 1937 Albert Einstein, who was spending the summer in Huntington, visited the house briefly when his boat went aground nearby. He and his sailing companion walked up the beach to the house. Einstein waited outside while his companion use the phone, and he later sent a letter to the memoirist’s mother, thanking her for her help. When the current owners bought the house in 1996, they created an open layout on the main floor but kept many details of the old dock house, including the original eyebrow windows. A mahogany deck along the back of the house, featuring tempered glass for better water views, replaced a deck damaged during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The home includes four bedrooms and 2.5 baths and comes with a floating dock and beach rights. The listing agent is Maria Boccard of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty.