The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has granted $3.75M to Sylvester Manor to create a history and heritage center “that celebrates histories and stories that have been neglected, hidden and forgotten.”
“Sylvester Manor is the steward of an important site of New York, American, and world history that has the power and potential to reach and relate to every one of us,” said Justin Garrett Moore of the Mellon Foundation Humanities in Place Program.
“With Mellon support for the preservation and improvement of the historic home and expanded staff for the History & Heritage Department, the infrastructure will soon be in place to enable greater public access to a more complete account of American history and life,” Moore said.
“In addition, artist and scholar residencies at Sylvester Manor will be an exciting opportunity to keep the site’s rich and layered history alive and engaging, reminding us that the past is present, and helps to shape our collective future,” he said.
Sylvester Manor Executive Director Stephen Searl said the nonprofit is “thrilled to be able to take this transformative step in partnership with Mellon’s Humanities in Place team.”
The grants, Searl said, “will help make this nationally-significant historic site fully accessible for public programming and scholarly place-based learning and enable staff to continue the important work of researching and interpreting a more inclusive history of Sylvester Manor and this nation.”
Over three years, the grants will simultaneously fund the creation of the Center for History & Heritage within the Manor House and expand Sylvester Manor’s research capacity. Capital improvements of $2.5M will be made to the rear portion of the Manor House, an addition from 1908, and $1.25M will go toward capacity building.
The rehabilitated space will include the following:
- exhibition and program spaces, along with meeting areas on the first floor
- offices for expanded History & Heritage staff
- artist/scholar-in-residence workspaces and accommodations on the second floor
- support facilities, kitchen, and workshop in the basement
The building will be made ADA-compliant and fully accessible with the installation of exterior ramps and an elevator spanning the three floors. Slated to commence later this year, the construction will be a distinct phase of a larger capital project to preserve and rehabilitate the extant 1737 Manor House.
The Mellon Foundation funding also enables Sylvester Manor to grow its History & Heritage Department with new full-time staff positions and the implementation of associated programs, tours, exhibitions, and research.
The grants kick off the transformation of Sylvester Manor into a place-based center for history and storytelling. The focus, the Manor says, will be “on representing the lives and stories of those who have been marginalized, lost or forgotten in the incomplete annals of history.”
About Sylvester Manor
Home for millennia to indigenous Manhansett People, Sylvester Manor once encompassed all of Shelter Island. Today’s 236-acre site is the most intact remnant of a former slaveholding plantation north of Virginia.
It was home to 11 generations of Sylvester descendants, from 1652 until 2014 when it was gifted to Sylvester Manor Educational Farm.
In 2015, Sylvester Manor was designated a Historic District of national significance on the National Register of Historic Places.
In addition to the Manor House, the site includes a restored 19th-century windmill, an Afro-Indigenous Burial Ground, and a working farm, with educational and cultural arts programs open to all.
For more information, visit www.sylvestermanor.org.
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation says it has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding.
“The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.
