LVD at the Maidstone

LVD at the Maidstone

The white shingles and green awnings announce themselves before the sign does, set back from Main Street across from Town Pond, on ground that Thomas Osborne bought from Robert Bond sometime between 1650 and 1660 and worked as a tannery for six generations of Osbornes after him. The Greek Revival structure standing today was built in 1840 by William L.H. Osborn, who dropped the family's final "e" and opened the place to lodgers as Osborn House; his son Burnett ran it for 32 years, the building survived a tree falling on it in the 1938 hurricane, and ownership passed through the Hampton Hotel Corporation, the Reiswig family, and then, in 2008, Jenny and Jonathan Baker, who gave it its long "Scandinavian cozy" identity. In April 2023, Irwin D. Simon and Mayank Dwivedi of ISMD Management bought the property, and in June 2024 it reopened under LDV Hospitality, the restaurant group behind Scarpetta, with John Meadow as chief executive. It has 19 rooms, suites, and cottages, no two decorated quite alike. The Baker-era Scandinavian palette has given way to a Mediterranean, Italian-summer register under LDV, though the bones, wide-board floors, deep porches, small-paned windows, remain those of a 19th-century inn. Rooms carry Frette linens and Santa Maria Novella bath products; the cottages have wood-burning fireplaces and private blue-stone patios. The restaurant, LDV at the Maidstone, is run by chef Jorge Espinoza, formerly of Scarpetta, whose menu of crudo, Long Island oysters, and grilled seasonal fish is built around aperitivo hour and a full bar rather than a tasting menu. Guests get beach passes to Main Beach and the loan of a red cruiser bike, the ones you will see locked up all over the village. What it feels like is the middle of things, not apart from them. This is not a hotel you retreat to; it is the one you are seen at, five minutes on foot from the shops on Main Street and the same distance by bike from the water. The crowd skews adult, well-dressed, and socially fluent, the kind of guest who wants a spritz on the porch before dinner and to run into someone they know while having it. You should not come if you want privacy, quiet, or distance from East Hampton's summer traffic, all three of which the location works directly against. You should come for exactly the opposite: a front-row seat on Main Street, a restaurant that functions as the evening's destination rather than an afterthought, and 180 years of continuous history under a hotel group that knows how to run a dining room. The short version: A 19-room, suite, and cottage hotel on East Hampton's Main Street, built in 1840 on a 17th-century tannery site, now run by LDV Hospitality with an Italian-leaning restaurant and complimentary Main Beach passes.