I almost didn’t recognize this photograph, even though I’ve been involved with the building since 2011. The New York Public Library digital archive has this labelled as the “Onderdonk Mill, Roslyn” and if they hadn’t mentioned the town name I wold have gone right by it. We’ve always called it the Roslyn Grist Mill. The Onderdonk family didn’t build it, but they owned it for fifty years early in its existence, in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The photo is dated as 1862, and the other reason I didn’t recognize it is that the mill changed a great deal after that. It was converted in 1916 to a tea house, and dormer windows were added to the roof and the side walls changed. At some point in the twentieth century, the street in front, Old Northern Boulevard, was regraded up, putting the attic at street level on the front, the left side of the photo. The raceway for the waterwheel, which had replaced a natural stream, was replaced by a culvert and pipe, connecting Roslyn Pond to Hempstead Harbor.
Our work on repairing the heavy timber frame, and bracing it so that the entire building could be raised back up to its proper relationship to the street, is described a bit: here. And if you look at the photos there and in the HABS link above, you’ll see the different variations on the building’s appearance.
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