Sylvester Manor / Update by Stephen Searl, Director, Preservation / Farm & Farmstand / Education ….

Dear Friends of Sylvester Manor,

Happy New Year!! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday full of family, friendship, and time with loved ones. 2024 was another productive year, and I want to share some exciting updates and news as we continue to fulfill our mission to Preserve, Cultivate and Share historic Sylvester Manor. Here are a few accomplishments, as well as a look ahead to 2025:

Historic Preservation
We continue to progress on rehabilitating and preserving the 1737 Manor House. In 2024, we hired additional staff to inventory, catalog, and pack up the contents of the House – many thousands of items and artifacts. This work is critical to the upcoming renewal of the Manor House and will greatly benefit the ongoing feasibility study for a potential new Archive and Special Collections Research Center at Sylvester Manor. Meanwhile, we are working with the Shelter Island Zoning Board of Appeals and Town Board to obtain the necessary permits; rehabilitation of the Manor House will start once all the required permits have been granted.

The Manor House has not undergone this level of renovation for over 100 years, and the work will include exterior, interior, fire suppression, and accessibility. We have raised over $6M in grants and private donations to date, and grantors include New York State, the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures program, the Gerry Charitable Trust, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2025, we will apply for another $2.5M in grants and continue our private fundraising efforts.

To learn more about preserving the Manor House and other capital projects, please reach out to us.
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History & Heritage

In 2023 Sylvester Manor received two separate Mellon Foundation grants in support of our ongoing History & Heritage work. These three-year grants, totaling nearly $2.5M, have enabled us to expand as a place-based center of inquiry, scholarship and public engagement. The funding also helped us expand partnerships with institutions of higher learning including New York University, Bard Graduate Center, the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at UMass Boston and Brown University. Earlier this fall, staff from our Department of History & Heritage spent over two weeks researching the Sylvester family’s historical and cultural connections to Europe in England, at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and The Netherlands at the City Archives of Amsterdam. Our research focused on the colonial period during the 1600s and the Sylvester family’s place in the expansion of the Atlantic World. This trip included work on developing a documentary film that explores the Dutch/Shelter Island/Barbados ties with two very well known Dutch filmmakers and writers. Most recently, we learned that the Mellon Foundation has granted $1M to the University of West Indies (UWI) at Barbados to further research the historical connection between sites like Sylvester Manor and the sugar cane plantations in Barbados. Students from UWI will likely be coming to Sylvester Manor in the spring, hopefully overlapping with our archaeology team from UMass Boston, who are slated to return for 6-8 weeks to continue their study of the Afro-Indigenous Burial Ground. 

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Farm & Farmstand

In 2024 we again donated nearly $40,000 in Sylvester Manor farm products to food pantries, including 22 weekly shares of vegetables, pork and eggs to community members in need. Our plan is to donate at least 25 shares of vegetables, pork and eggs to those in need in 2025. We also diverted nearly 20,000 pounds of food waste from the Island’s waste stream through our expanded compost and food scrap program, with continued support from the Ida and Robert Gordon Family Foundation. Our farmers are busy this winter growing food in the new greenhouses we constructed last winter, and in the spring we’ll be working on improvements to our wash station thanks in large part to a successful Giving Tuesday which raised over $10,000! We’re looking forward to another productive year on the farm. Sign up here for your 2025 CSA share. Every year, our Farmstand continues to grow in locally sourced products and Sylvester Manor-grown produce. We are now working on offering value-added and prepared foods from our very own kitchen with our very own produce! We’ll have more information about this and other Farm & Farmstand updates in the spring.

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Education & Outreach

Nearly 18,000 visitors came to Sylvester Manor in 2024 to tour our first-ever outdoor sculpture exhibition, attend the first Shakespeare at the Manor performance since 2019, dance along to our August creekside concert, and walk our 5 miles of trails. In addition, nearly 400 school-aged children were able to experience place-based learning through our Summer Youth Programs and field trips. Registration for next year’s Summer Youth Programs will open February 3, 2025. We’ll be offering a brand new program for 2- and 3-year-olds in 2025. Our educational and cultural programs have continued to grow over the years and are all part of our efforts to make Sylvester Manor open and accessible to the whole community.

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A Look Ahead

The Manor House will again be closed to the public in 2025, but we will continue to provide tours of the historic grounds and build on our successful “Beyond the Scenes” tours held this past Fall. Our beloved Farm to Table Benefit will be on Saturday, June 28. We also plan to host Shakespeare at the Manor, another creekside concert, a ferry cruise, a pig roast and other fun family events at the Farm. Please be sure to check back with us soon…there’s no shortage of things to do and experience at Sylvester Manor! Trails will reopen in March at the conclusion of the annual deer management program.  

Special thanks to all those who have contributed time, money, and expertise over the past year. We rely on YOUR support and commitment to preserving and interpreting the past so that we can build a more sustainable future. Together, we are transforming Sylvester Manor into a welcoming community resource, with special emphasis on acknowledging its full history, and continued dedication to historic preservation, food & farming, place-based learning, and cultural programming.

As we welcome 2025, please consider making a GIFT TODAY to help us build on this amazing momentum. We can do all this and more, thanks to your generosity.

DONATE NOW

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