Gomez Mill House

Infobox nrhp
name = Gomez Mill House
nrhp_type =

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caption = House in 2007. Original 1714 fieldstone still visible in first storey.
location = Town of Newburgh, NY
nearest_city = Newburgh
lat_degrees = 41
lat_minutes = 35
lat_seconds = 12
lat_direction = N
long_degrees = 78
long_minutes = 58
long_seconds = 53
long_direction = W
area =
built = 1714
architect = Wolfert Acker
architecture =
added = 1973
visitation_num =
visitation_year =
refnum = 73001245
mpsub =
governing_body = Gomez Foundation for Mill HouseThe Gomez Mill House is located in the Town of Newburgh, New York, USA, on Mill House Road a short distance off US 9W, just south of the Orange-Ulster county line (its mailing address is in nearby Marlboro, in the latter). Continuously inhabited for 280 years, it is the earliest known surviving Jewish residence in the country and the oldest home in Orange County listed on the National Register of Historic Placescite web|title=Gomez Mill House: History|url=http://www.gomez.org/history.html|date=May 7, 2007|accessdate=2007-12-13]

History

In 1714 Luis Moses Gomez, a Sephardic Jew from Spain, fled the Spanish Inquisition for the New World. He was able to purchase 6,000 acres (24 km²) on the west side of the Hudson River in the then-British colony of New York. He built a fieldstone block house, with walls three feet (1 m) thick on the side of a hill alongside a stream that came to be known as Jews Creek. He and his sons ran a profitable fur trading post for the next thirty years.

Shortly before the Revolutionary War, a Dutch immigrant named Wolfert Acker bought the property. He added a second storey and attic using bricks made from local clay, bringing the main part of the house into its present form. He would serve with the local Minutemen and chaired the area's Committee of Safety during the war.

In the early 19th century, it passed on to William Henry Armstrong, a local farmer. During the half-century he and his family lived there, the kitchen wing and garden walls were added. During the next century, it had many other owners, the most notable being Dard Hunter, a papermaker associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. He bought the Mill House in 1909cite web|title=Gomez Mill House:Occupants|url=http://www.gomez.org/occupants.html|date=November 1 2006|accessdate=2007-12-13] and built a small paper mill on the property in the shape of a Devonshire cottage, complete with thatched roof, where he taught students the arts of preindustrial papermaking, printing and publishing for the next seven years. He sold it in 1919 in anticipation of military service. He claimed in his autobiography that a representative of the Russian government bought it for use as a school, but the real buyer was progressive activist Martha Gruening, who tried to establish a libertarian school in the building.

After World War II, it became home to Mildred Starin and her family. She fixed the property up, restored it to its original appearance and successfully got it listed on the National Register in 1973. Eleven years later, the New York City-based Gomez Foundation, which had been established in 1979, purchased the house to restore it and operate it as a museum, which it does today.

References

External links

* [http://www.gomez.org Gomez Foundation website]