Is a windmill an hitoric house:
A friend of mine, who lived next to the "Liberty Diner" and replaced
me as a night manager at the "Zum Zum" in the Mall, ow an engineer,
once took me to a shore sight on the edge of the Stanford White Estate
("muy importante" architect, shot dead over a alleged sexual
impropriety involving a swing, the shooter found "insane") to the
remains of what I found out was once perhaps the world's tallest
windmill that Stanford White designed and had built to pump water
behind the "squash courts"(?). The cast iron stanchions, made in
Baltimore, MD, were mostly all that was left of structure, bulldozed,
once exhibited in "Scientific American" in a "cutaway" drawing. It was
totally clad, as is his designed "skirted" church (carrying water
away from the foundation in an outward arc of shingle beginning near
the bottom) in nearby Stony Brook, (where the "Museums of Stony Brook"
are) in wooden shingles, the style he seemed to work in there and
Nissequogue where the estate still is. The "blades" of the windmill
were more like a large dense circular fan, (than the European
archetype, "Dutch" windmill). It burned down in the early 1960's and
was a popular visual landmark to boats and ships upon the nearby Long
Island Sound, between New York and Connecticut.
Interestingly, I worked for a general contractor years later who had a
small contract on the Standford White Estate, which involved replacing
the many panes of a large window in a roof to allow light into what
was then a sculpture studio. The contractor replaced the many panes
with a modern glass patio door turned sideways so one could quickly
cool the area off by sliding open the big panel of glass in the roof,
still admitting light into the studio. I was there to pick up the
trash after the construction, having worked on fixing up what had been
a "creamery" in Wading River, NY with him, its owner the former
President of the Suffolk County Archaeological Association, Gaynell
Stone.
George Myers
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