A Building Rises

We’ve been working for some time – by which I mean a little over nine years – at the Roslyn Grist Mill on Long Island. It’s not often we get to work on a building this old, and it’s a challenge in every possible way: the heavy-timber frame had been badly altered in some places when the building was still in use; it has deteriorated since use ended in the 1970s; the site is sloping, below the adjacent street grade, and adjacent to a bay off the Long Island Sound. Our nine years seems like nothing: John G. Waite Associates, the project architect, has been working there for several decades. The project team also includes Cole Engineering & Construction as the construction manager, and Jan Lewandowski Restoration & Traditional Building as the restoration framer.

The project has come a long way – the building has been shored and the early stages of the restoration carpentry work have begun – but the permanent construction work is just now, finally, moving. Part of the project is raising the building to allow for new foundations to be built, replacing the badly damaged ones present, to get the main floor back to the street grade (the adjacent street was raised several feet in the 1920s), and to allow the construction of a new lower level above the adjacent water. Yesterday, Wolfe House & Building Movers raised the mill about eight feet to allow for the foundation work to start; once the new foundations are in place the Buidling will be lowered to its new permanent elevation about four feet above where it was.

Now for the show…

The picture above is from the HABS survey of the building, and shows its configuration as a tea shop during the mid-1900s. The rear extension, for example, is long gone. Here’s some TV coverage, including an interview with Nancy Rankin of JGWA: CBS. Here’s some newspaper coverage, including some nice aerial photos from a drone: Newsday. Chris Cole, Jan Lewandowski, Mona Abdelfatah, Nancy Rankin, and I are all visible in the background of some of the video.