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Burma Treehouse
Chess Box
Chinese Bridge
Clouds and Mountains Fence
Disneyland Treehouse
Gateway to the Sea
Mahogany Doors
Peaked Gateway
Schell Mantle
Shoji Paris
Tarlow Gate
Timber Frame Arbor
Tree Stairs
Tudor Gate
Twig Copper Gazebo
Windmill
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I built this client’s kitchen in 1987. He had just purchased and was renovating the estate on Shelter Island NY. One day I climbed up into the tower attached to the carriage house to see the remains of what was once a water pumping windmill. There was nothing left but some rusty metal hunk of junk which was once the mechanism and rotten wood. I immediately told the client if he ever considered restoring the windmill I would love to have the chance to do it. In 1992 he took me up on the offer. I knew nothing about windmills, but it was now time to learn.
I read everything I could, contacted the gentleman who was curator of the Windmill Museum on Martha’s Vineyard, and spoke to all the locals I could to get any information.
What I found out was that this windmill was called an Estate Mill. Typically they were constructed for large estates to supply water. Water pumping windmills were quite common, but it was the large size and fancy enclosed tower around the water barrel that earned them the name Estate Mills. This windmill was erected in 1898 and the carriage house and tower were finished in 1903.
The house had formerly belonged to an Elderly woman who grew up on Shelter Island. Her family owned the house and she spent her entire life there. The family kept their horses in a stable not far away (which was once part of the estate). There was a stable boy in the family’s employ who cared for the horses. He and the then young woman fell in love. Her father forbade her to see her young love as he was “working class”. She obeyed. He was heart broken and understandably furious.
It is said that one night on a drunken binge, the spurned stable hand caught several stray cats, climbed up into the tower and threw the cats in the water barrel. Within a few days everyone in the house was quite ill. The source of the sickness was discovered, the water tank drained and then cleaned with bleach, rinsed with vinegar-water and then re-filled. Everyone recovered, but I was told that the family was never able to bring themselves to drink the water again. It was used for bathing, washing and watering of the grounds, but all drinking water from then on was trucked in from Brooklyn.
The young woman never married and remained single for the rest of her life.
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