The East Village beach house

High atop a five-story apartment building on First Avenue and East First Street stands a cedar-shake structure — complete with a cupola and a weather vane — that looks like it blew in from the Hamptons. How it got there has remained a mystery, until now.

According to Robert Strong, who owns a condo beneath the charming abode, sculptor Henry Merwin Shrady III bought the building, vacant and derelict, around 1980. He renovated it, keeping the fourth and fifth floors — and the rooftop abode — for himself. “It’s a small studio apartment,” said Strong of the penthouse, which he has visited several times. “It very much has a cottage-in-the-country feel.”

Shrady’s widow, Gale Barrett Shrady, is the current owner of the penthouse, which has often been occupied by family members. “It is a magical little spot that was my son’s room through college,” she told The Post.