Manor House Construction Update
June 12, 2024
We continue to make progress in the planning and permitting for the preservation of the 1737 Manor House. Starting in
The lands of Shelter Island’s Sylvester Manor were home for millennia to indigenous Manhansett People. The 236-acre site is the most intact remnant of a former slaveholding plantation north of Virginia. The site was home to eleven generations of Sylvester descendants, from 1652 until 2014, when it was gifted to the nonprofit organization Sylvester Manor. Over the past 370 years, Sylvester Manor has been a provisioning plantation, an Enlightenment-era farm, and a pioneering food industrialist’s summer estate. Today, the site includes a 1737 Manor House, a restored 19th-century windmill, an Afro-Indigenous Burial Ground, and a working farm along with educational, history & heritage and cultural arts programs open to all. Sylvester Manor was designated a Historic District of national significance on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
Come explore the past, present and future with us…
13 full-time, 64 seasonal & part-time
Live on Shelter Island
Annual budget
Spent with East End vendors, including $200K on-Island
school children hosted
for Shelter Island students
in scholarships awarded
of farmland & open space cared for
of public walking trails maintained
in farm product sales
in food donated to local families
of waste diverted from recycling center
in grants supporting food access & soil health
Manor House tour guests
collection items cataloged
visitors to Sculpture @ Sylvester Manor
gathered for Juneteenth commemoration
We continue to make progress in the planning and permitting for the preservation of the 1737 Manor House. Starting in
Among the challenging tasks we face is planning for the future of the house itself. The 46 rooms — basement
The Capital Campaign’s immediate aims are rehabilitating the Manor House exterior and developing the future History & Heritage Center in
