Philo Bevin House (1872)

The Second Empire-style house at 26 Barton Hill Road in East Hampton was built in 1872 by Philo Bevin, who was born in 1813 in the William Bevin House across the street. Philo was one of four brothers who ran the Bevin Brothers Manufacturing Company, which helped transform East Hampton into Belltown, USA and still manufactures bells today. As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County, Connecticut (1903)

A man of high moral principles, Mr. Bevin sought to promote every work calculated to advance the mental and moral condition of mankind, as well as to further the material welfare of his town and State. He was closely identified with the work of the local Congregational Church, in which he acted successively as clerk and treasurer. Being a stanch supporter of temperance principles, his life was an ideal one in the line of proper living. Politically he was a Whig in early life, and promptly joined the Republican party upon its organization. At one time he represented his town in the Legislature.

The house remained in the Bevin family until 1971. Alice Conklin Bevin (1893-1969), Philo’s granddaughter, occupied the house in the 1940s. She was a well-known artist who painted murals in the house’s third-floor bathroom and in the property’s barn, which she used as a studio. In 2015, new owner Dean Brown began a major restoration of the house into a bed & breakfast called The Bevin House.