St. James General Store and Stony Brook Grist Mill

Saint James

Stony Brook

Long Island

Let’s kill two mediocre birds with one post. You know how sometimes you get really excited for something that when it actually happens it’s a bit of a letdown? I think that’s what happened for me with the St. James General Store and Stony Brook Grist Mill. It probably didn’t help that I visited them at the end of a subway ride, train ride with a nearly-impossible-to-make transfer, walk to a car rental place that was sold out of GPS units even though we had reserved one, and hour-long car ride in terrible traffic. Plus I was hungry.

That said, even if I had been in the best of possible physical states, I think I still would have been disappointed by the St. James General Store. My Off the Beaten Path: Metro New York guide really hyped it up: “Be sure to stop by National Landmark St. James General Store…it’s the oldest continuously operating general store in the country and looks just as it did in 1890.” Wow! I thought, that sounds amazing! I, unfortunately, have learned the hard way that my Off the Beaten Path guidebook often unnecessarily hypes things up. Of course the store doesn’t look just like it did in 1890. That would be impossible—it wouldn’t have been able to compete with modern stores.

“The shelves are stocked with more than 4,000 items, many of which are nineteenth-century reproductions,” my book continued. Yes, the shelves are stocked. And some of the items are nineteenth-century reproductions, but mostly it’s just a bunch of useless stuff that barely manages to hold ones attention. The exterior is pretty—painted in bright colors like a Victorian home in San Francisco, but I doubt that’s what it looked like when it opened in 1857. Now it’s more the sort of place that caters to people’s ideas of what a 19^th-century general store might have been like.

The most interesting thing in the store was a green flyer with the history of the place. It spoke of how the town had been established by an agreement between Robert Smith and the Nesaquake Indians—they agreed to let him own as much land as he could cover in a day on his pet bull. The general store (which also served as the local post office) was started up by one of his descendants, Ebenezer Smith. It remained in family hands until the 1950s, when it was going to be converted into a home but was purchased by a local couple who wanted to preserve it as the general store. Finally, in 1990, the Suffolk County Parks Department purchased it and dedicated it to the Suffolk County Historic Trust.

The green flyer claimed that “[s]ales women dressed in Gibson Girl outfits are eager to answer questions about the store’s history, or to point out the many museum pieces that line the shelves, mingled with a large assortment of merchandise for sale.” The one woman who was working there when we visited seemed to have little interest in us even though we were the only ones in the store at the time, and she certainly was not dressed as a Gibson Girl. She’s probably used to people walking in and then walking right back out. Perhaps there were museum pieces lining the shelves, but it was too hard to find them amongst the large assortment of merchandise for sale.

Had our timing been better, we probably would have enjoyed the Stony Brook Grist Mill. The problem is, it’s only open Saturdays and Sundays in May, June, and September through December, and only from noon to 4:30pm. In July and August it’s also open on Fridays during the same hours. Since we arrived on a Friday in June, we could admire only the exterior, which was mildly picturesque. The windows were all tightly shuttered, so there was no peering at the machinery inside.

It had been opened in 1751 and is still a functioning mill, albeit for show and educational purposes. It was bought in 1947 by local philanthropist Ward Melville whose heritage association also offers wetland tours. If you’re going to be in the area, it can’t hurt to stop by, especially since admission is only $2 for adults and $1 for children. Maybe the interior is super exciting; maybe it’s just dusty. Hard to tell.

Within walking distance from the Gristmill is the Stony Brook shopping center. Mr. Melville also struck upon a solution to allow businesses to grow in the village while maintaining its historic feel—move all the businesses to one area away from the harbor. Now the majority of town’s businesses and restaurants located in what is known as the Village Center. It’s a good place to find something to eat after several hours of traveling via various means.

Also within walking distance from the Gristmill is the Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages. We did not visit this museum, even though I had been excited by the idea of a museum of carriages. We were feeling overwhelmed and crunched for time—we still had to get to the Walt Whitman Birthplace (post to follow) and the Long Island Museum is a large, 9-acre complex that actually houses three separate museums: The Margaret Melville Blackwell History Museum which features miniature period rooms and a collection of antique decoys, the Dorothy and Ward Melville Carriage House with over ninety horse-drawn carriages, and the Art Museum which shows American art from the 18^th century to the present. Also on the grounds are several 18^th and 19^th century buildings, including a blacksmith shop, one-room schoolhouse, barn, carriage shed, and colonial burial grounds.

It was just more than we felt we could handle at the time. Although, it sounds pretty awesome. One day I’ll have to return to Stony Brook to find out if it is. Probably on a Saturday or a Sunday when that damn gristmill is open.

http://www.stonybrookvillage.com/stony-brook-grist-mill-c-1751
http://www.longislandmuseum.org/default.asp

Sands Point Preserve

Sands Point 

Long Island

I will be the first to admit that I have been terribly negligent of this blog for several months. I will not bore you with platitudes about work and time and obligations. Rather, I will simply reverse the current trend and start once again revealing the lesser-known wonders that can be found in and around NYC. Tourists probably won’t venture to these out-of-the-way locations, but New Yorkers have no reason not to hop on their bikes or Metro North or LIRR and do a little exploring this summer.

There’s going to be quite the exploration of Long Island’s Gold Coast over the next several posts. This is the Long Island of Fitzgerald and Gatsby, Long Island’s less-visited North Shore. New Yorkers flock to the beaches of Fire Island and Montauk, but forget the Hamptons and set your sights a few degrees higher if you want to see how the One Percent lived circa 1900.

Sands Point Preserve is a perfect place to start as it gives you plenty of bang for your buck: 216 acres with three homes (two of which are bona fide castles), several miles of hiking trails, and access to Long Island Sound with a view of Connecticut. For Gatsby fans, this is the famed area of the “East Egg.”

The estate was purchased in 1900 by Howard Gould, son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould. Something that seems to be a running theme amongst many of the great Gold Coast estates is they were often built by America’s original trust-fund babies. By 1904 the first building on the estate was completed, the impressive 100,000-square-foot Castle Gould, which was built in the style of Castle Kilkenny in Ireland. Gould’s wife Katherine Clemmons—an actress who married him for his money—didn’t like Castle Gould, so he began building the more modestly-sized 50,000-square-foot Tudor manor Hampstead House, completed in 1912. Castle Gould was converted to the horse stables and servants’ quarters. Katherine never got to enjoy Hempstead House as Gould divorced her in 1909 for having an ongoing affair with Buffalo Bill Cody as well as for being a fall-down drunk who regularly had three cocktails before breakfast.

Like the former Mrs. Gould, most visitors will have to be content to admire Castle Gould and Hempstead House from the outside. Castle Gould is closed to visitors. It contains a great hall that the ridiculously wealthy can rent out for weddings and the like, and contains a sound stage often used by film crews. The great hall is also used for opera and other various cultural events and productions.

Hempstead House can be toured, but in order to do so you must very persistently contact the Preserve using various means. A woman I spoke to on the phone said I couldn’t visit the house. I also tried emailing, and some two weeks later got a response that I could. The guide is a no-frills affair led by one of the grounds keepers and the interior is virtually empty, but it’s still rather impressive. Like Castle Gould, Hempstead House can be rented out for bat mitzvahs (for the small fee of $11,000 a day) and film crews. Recent filming includes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Boardwalk Empire. Our guide, an adorable 20-something named Nico who later drove our bus to Falaise, was quite excited about getting to see Megan Fox while the Ninja Turtle crew was in the area. 

Also on the tour with us was a guy from New Jersey who didn’t at all seem like the sort of person who would be interested in visiting historical mansions. He was, however, keenly interested in how much everything cost. We even broke into the Guggenheims' safe, which had been hidden by later renovations. It was empty however, and the United States Navy had welded a hole through the thick metal door. No word if they had found anything inside.

In 1917 Howard Gould decided he was done with the Gold Coast, sold the estate to Daniel Guggenheim, and moved to Europe. Incidentally, Gould didn’t learn his lesson about actresses and ended up divorcing his second wife as well. Daniel Guggenheim was another trust-fund baby, son of the rag-to-riches immigrant Meyer Guggenheim who started off selling goods door-to-door and ended up amassing a fortune through importing and mining. You’re probably more familiar with Daniel’s brother Solomon and his niece, Peggy, the two Guggenheims responsible for collecting enough Modern Art to open several museums designed by big name architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry.

In 1923, Daniel gave 90 acres of his estate to his son Harry as a wedding gift for his first marriage. Harry had been an aviator in WWI and would later privately sponsor research that led to the development of liquid rocket fuel for space flights. He was also an avid (and quite successful) thoroughbred horse racer and founded Newsday with his third wife in 1940. But, back to his first wife, for whom he built the Norman manor house Falaise—“cliff” in French.

Falaise can be visited only by guided tour. Ours was a no-nonsense German-American woman of a certain age named Hedwig. The New Jersey fellow was on this tour with us, too, and he made the mistake of walking into a room prior to Hedwig’s consent. For the rest of the visit she referred to him as “young man” and watched him like a hawk. Children aren’t allowed on these tours as the furniture is wired to alarms so don’t touch anything Hedwig often reminded. It was also very important that she stand in a certain spot in each room. She explained, “This is my spot. I stand here and they push a button and I talk.”

Several books in Falaise’s libraries had been supplied by Charles Lindbergh, who had been a regular guest at the home and whose car remained parked in the driveway. Despite being a big supporter of Nazi Germany, even receiving the Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle from Hitler, Lindbergh and the Guggenheims seemed to be great friends. Which only goes to show the power of money and fame for compensating for Jewishness and anti-Semitism. Part of Lindbergh’s hand-written manuscript for his novel, We, was framed on the wall near his guest room. When Falaise was opened to the public for tours, Lindbergh was one of the first guests. He didn’t like that some of the once-full book helves had been emptied by relatives and drove his own private library to the house to replenish the shelves.

After the grandiose openness of Hempstead House, Falaise seems rather small and dark. Or, perhaps “cozy” is a better word. Daniel Guggenheim traveled to France and collected a great deal of medieval artworks for the home. The house was practically a medieval church in places. There were so many Catholic artifacts that one would scarcely have believed Falaise had originally been the home of first-generation Jewish immigrants. As we traveled through the home, Hedwig let us know which paintings were rather lovely so we could properly admire them.

Daniel Guggenheim enjoyed Hempstead House until his death in 1930. His widow Florence then built and relocated to the much smaller Mille Fleurs. This building cannot be visited or even admired from the outside as it is on the private part of the estate. Guests touring Falaise get only a small glimpse of it on the bus ride from Castle Gould. The Hempstead House furnishings were sold in 1940 and Florence turned the house to an orphanage for WWII British refugee children. The rather crumbling third floor is still decorated with paintings put on the walls to make the rooms more cheerful for their young guests.

Hempstead House served as an orphanage for only two years. In 1942 Florence donated 162 acres of the estate, including Hempstead House and Castle Gould, to the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, who later sold the property to the US Navy in 1946. It served as a training and testing base for the Navy until 1967 when the Naval Training Devices Center moved to Florida. The area was then declared “government surplus.” In 1971, Nassau County bought 127 acres for public use. Harry Guggenheim died that same year and left his 90 acres along with Falaise to the county for use as a museum. The local government couldn’t afford to run the site and when news came that it was going to be closed to the public, in 2003, Long Island’s wealthy citizens formed the Friends of Sands Point Preserve to maintain and protect the buildings and grounds.

And that is how we today are allowed to peer enviously into the past lives of people who had way too much money. Bring a picnic as there aren’t any dining options in the Preserve, though there are vending machines by the bathrooms and sometimes an ice cream truck parks itself outside Castle Gould. It’s “free” to walk around the nature trails, but parking is $10. Be sure to pick up the map with a self-guided tour of some of the trails—good luck spotting the “forest stratification” and “soil moisture” identified in the guide. Plus some of the trails have ridiculous exercise equipment scattered throughout them to encourage hikers to be more active than they already are. Tours of Falaise are $10 a person, and if you can manage to wrangle a visit to Hempstead House, that will run you another $5 per person.

http://thesandspointpreserve.com/