Villa Maria

Villa Maria stands at the western edge of the Water Mill business district, with lawns running down to Mecox Bay. It is a South Fork estate in the Town of Southampton, not a North Shore Gold Coast house.

Sources disagree on its origins. A 2018 article in 27east says it was built in 1887 as a private residence for family members and partners of Lombard, Ayres and Company, who also bought the Corwith Windmill and moved it from North Haven to their front lawn, now the village green. A 2015 article in the same paper and a 2018 Cottages and Gardens report give 1897, and a 2025 Dan's Papers column gives 1883 and names Josiah Lombard as the builder. The house was first called Red Gables and later Grey Gables, for the color of its roof.

Later owners included the urologist Dr. Edward Keyes and Edward P. Morse of the Morse Dry Dock and Repair Company. In 1919 Morse more than doubled the size of the house, adding a ballroom, a sweeping staircase, limestone, stucco and colonnades. Anne Surchin and Gary Lawrance, in Houses of the Hamptons 1880-1930, as quoted by 27east, describe the result as a late Victorian cottage turned into an Italian villa by the sea. In 1929 the property was auctioned to Courtland Palmer, who gave it to the stage actress Ann Murdagh; about two years later she sold it for $250,000 to the Sisters of the Order of St. Dominic, who named it Villa Maria. The sisters ran Villa Maria High School there until 1953, then used it as a retirement home, and in 1992 opened the Siena Spirituality Center. They gave the windmill to the Water Mill Improvement Association.

In 2005 Vince Camuto, a founder of the Nine West shoe company, and his wife, the interior designer Louise Camuto, bought the 14.6-acre property from the sisters for $35 million. The sale required that the main house be kept and that the public view of the water be preserved. Architect Andre Tchelistcheff, landscape designer Edmund Hollander and restoration builder John Hummel rebuilt the house over several years. The Camutos listed it in 2008 for $100 million, and it was still for sale when Vince Camuto died in January 2015. In early 2018 the estate sold in two transactions, which the Wall Street Journal reported as $36 million for the house and an adjacent parcel and $13 million for the remaining land.

The house has about 20,000 square feet and 11 bedrooms. It is a private residence and is not open to the public, although its lawn and bay can be seen from the road.