When I worked with Hudson Valley magazine, we often mentioned the Gomez Mill House in our issues. Located in Marlboro right off of Route 9W, the mansion house was built in 1714 and is the oldest Jewish-owned dwelling in the U.S. It was a place I often passed in my travels but I never took the time to visit. This week, I found myself in the area so I made sure to stop by and explore.
The house is closed to the public due to Covid-19; tours were available before, and I hope they will pick up again in the future. Isn't it beautiful?
And there's a surprise on the side of it. I blurred the photo to enhance it - it's a heart surrounded by a diamond. Can you see it? The house (actually a one-room home, apparently the part that's stone) was built in 1714 by Louis Moses Gomez, a trader and entrepreneur. The brick mansion was built around it at a later date.
Other owners - according to the Gomez Foundation - include Wolfert Ecker, a Revolutionary War leader; W.H. Armstrong, a conservationist; and Martha Gruening, a suffragist and journalist. But although I appreciated the lineage and history of that beautiful house, perched above the Mill Creek, I was really there for the property across Old Mill Road from it.
Look at that: a 17th-century-esque cottage nestled on the bank of that pretty little creek!
Dard Hunter owned Gomez Mill House from 1912-1918. Hunter was trained as a typesetter and artist for his father's newspaper business, and eventually worked in London designing books. Hunter became fascinated with the idea of making paper after seeing an exhibit of papermaking equipment at the London Science Museum.
In 1912, Hunter and his wife Edith moved to Marlboro. I'll let the Dard Hunter website pick up from there: "By 1913, Hunter had built a 16 x 14’ paper mill on Jew’s Creek [now named Mill Creek], across the road from the main house. The mill was fashioned after a 17th century Devonshire cottage, complete with a thatched roof made from rye he grew himself. Not wanting to compromise his goal to manufacture paper using 17th-century techniques, he relied entirely upon a water wheel to provide power to the mill."
At the time, there were no other papermakers in America. Hunter was so successful, he apparently couldn't keep up with demand - especially since the water wheel didn't operate efficiently, if at all, during the winter. He and his wife moved away from Marlboro in 1918. Luckily for all of us, the main house and the breathtaking cottage remain.
As you approach the cottage, the water rushing over the creek's dam is quite thunderous. As you cross the beautiful arched bridge over the creek and stand next to the cottage, the noise strangely quiets.
No trolls were sighted underneath this bridge. But I wouldn't be surprised if some lived there. The entire property had a fairytale feel.
Frost rimed the stones around the creek, and covered the handrails on the bridge. Luckily, it wasn't slippery at all, though I still took care making my way across.
Through the diamond-paned windows, I could only see shrouded bulks. A little eerie, but not so scary in the daylight. At only 16' by 14', the cottage is so small that it's almost difficult to picture a full papermaking operation going on here. Click the hard-to-see black arrow on the right of the photo below to scroll through more shots.
Near the road, there's an observation deck built on top of a stone building where you can get great shots of the cottage and of the main house
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Do try to visit the Gomez Mill House someday. It's worth the short trip, and it's really not difficult to find.
If you go, prepare for a meditative feeling as you wander among the stone walls and listen to the music of the creek (above the hum of traffic on 9W). Imagine yourself warmed by that rambled-stone fireplace, looking through those diamond windows at the creek rushing by. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, so it should be preserved for generations to come.
I'm happy to learn of this gem. The craft of that thatched roof and the stonework is wonderful. I imagine paper making powered by a water wheel was very slow going.