Drive through Nassau County and it’s easy to forget how old it really is. But, between the highways, LIRR stations, shopping centers, and neighborhoods, you’ll find a house that was standing before the American Revolution or a mill built when George I was king. That’s the thing about history here in Nassau County – it rarely stays separated from the present. Instead, the modern-day County grew around those roots.
As America marks its 250th anniversary, we’re looking at some of the places where you can still see those earlier versions of Nassau County and what became of them.
Elderfields Preserve, Flower Hill
Then: A Long Island Farmstead
Drive along Port Washington Boulevard today and it’s hard to imagine this part of Nassau County as countryside. Then you reach Elderfields Preserve.
The four-acre property includes a main house incorporating an original 17th-century home, making it one of the oldest surviving structures on Long Island. There are also carriage sheds and a walled garden.
The property evolved over generations, which is part of what makes it so interesting. Elderfields isn’t a house frozen at one particular moment. Its architecture reflects centuries of change as a colonial-era property became part of the increasingly developed North Shore.
Now: History Meets Art
Today, Elderfields belongs to Nassau County and has taken on another life. The property was left to the County in 1996 by Henry deV. Williams and has been developed as an arts center, with studios, classrooms and gallery space. The Art Guild of Port Washington holds classes and exhibitions there, while the grounds remain open to the public.
Raynham Hall, Oyster Bay
Then: A House With a Very Big Secret
If the walls at Raynham Hall Museum could talk, they would have an amazing Revolutionary War story to tell. The Townsend family home dates to the colonial era, and during the British occupation of Long Island, British officers used the house as their headquarters. There was just one major complication. Samuel Townsend’s son Robert Townsend was secretly working for George Washington as part of the Culper Spy Ring.
Under the code name “Culper Jr.,” Townsend gathered intelligence in British-controlled New York as part of the secret network that passed information to Washington. Meanwhile, British officers were staying in his family’s Oyster Bay home.
Raynham Hall’s collections and period rooms now interpret the Townsend family, the people they enslaved, and the home’s role in the Revolution and the Culper Spy Ring.
Now: Walk Into Revolutionary Oyster Bay
Today, Raynham Hall is a museum in the middle of downtown Oyster Bay.
That location is part of the appeal. You don’t travel to some remote historic compound to find it. You can explore the house and then step directly back onto West Main Street. The museum offers guided and self-guided experiences, exhibits and original material connected to the Townsend family and the Culper Spy Ring.
Rock Hall, Lawrence
Then: Revolutionary-era home
At Rock Hall Museum, there’s no need to imagine what a substantial pre-Revolutionary home looked like. You can walk through one.
The Georgian-style house was built in 1767 for Josiah Martin, a wealthy West Indian plantation owner. It later belonged to the Hewlett family, and its history reflects the Atlantic economy and social structures of colonial New York, including slavery. When the American Revolution began nine years after the house was constructed, this was still a very new home.
Now: An 18th-Century House in Modern Lawrence
The Hewlett family deeded Rock Hall to the Town of Hempstead in 1948, and it opened as a museum after restoration in 1953. Today, the furnished house museum includes spaces visitors don’t always get to see in historic homes: a warming kitchen, cold-storage room and wine cellar. Archaeological finds from the property also help tell the stories of the people who lived and worked there.
Valley Road Historic District, Manhasset
Then: A Community Called Success
Along what was historically known as Valley Road in Manhasset, African American and Indigenous residents created a community known as Success. Free Black residents were living in the area by the late 18th century, and the community grew during the 19th century. After New York abolished slavery in 1827, formerly enslaved people and free Black families established homes and institutions here. By the 19th century, more than 30 buildings stood along Valley Road.
One of the community’s anchors was the Lakeville A.M.E. Zion Church. An A.M.E. congregation had formed earlier in the century, and by the 1830s it had established a church here. But this was so much more than a collection of houses. This was a community built around family, faith and independence during a period when Black New Yorkers were establishing lives in freedom.
Now: A Rare Piece of Black Long Island History
Much of Success disappeared as the surrounding area changed, but important pieces survived. The Valley Road Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. The National Park Service recognizes its significance in social history, religion and Indigenous history, and Lakeville A.M.E. Zion Church remains one of its most important landmarks.
It’s an especially important stop in the America250 story because it broadens the timeline. The story of America didn’t end when the Revolution did. What happened next, including the long process of ending slavery and building free Black communities, was part of defining what the country’s promise of liberty would actually mean.
Sands-Willets House, Port Washington
Then: Colonial-era home
On the Cow Neck Peninsula – what we now know as Port Washington – the oldest section of Sands-Willets House dates to the colonial era. The Sands family would become connected to the Revolutionary story, with members serving in the Patriot cause.
Now: One House, Multiple Centuries
The house visitors see today tells a longer story than its earliest rooms alone. It was expanded substantially over time, so its architecture allows you to see how a Long Island home changed as the region moved from the colonial era through the 19th century.
Roslyn Grist Mill, Roslyn
Then: Where the Work Happened
The Roslyn Grist Mill at the head of Hempstead Harbor is one of the rare surviving examples of how work happened centuries ago. A mill was established at the site in the early 1700s, and the surviving Dutch-framed structure was built and expanded between roughly 1715 and 1741. For more than 150 years, it operated as a working water mill, grinding local farmers’ grain and helping make the harbor community an important center of commerce. And in 1790, it got a rather notable visitor.
During his tour of Long Island, President George Washington visited Roslyn and met with mill owner Hendrick Onderdonk. Washington even mentioned the mill in his diary.
Now: Three Centuries and Still Here
The mill’s working days eventually ended. It became a museum and tea house in the 20th century, then sat vacant for decades. More recently, an extensive preservation project has been restoring the structure, right down to its historic timber frame. Over time, the road in front of the mill had been raised so much that the building appeared to have sunk below street level.
Jericho Friends Meeting House, Jericho
Then: A New Nation, a New Meeting House
The Jericho Friends Meeting House arrived just after the Revolution.
Local Quakers voted in 1787 to construct their own meeting house, and the building was completed around 1788. A schoolhouse followed a few years later.
Among the people associated with the meeting house was prominent Quaker minister Elias Hicks, whose name would become closely connected with the history of American Quakerism. The National Park Service recognizes the complex for both its architecture and social history.
It’s an important piece of the post-Revolution story. While the new United States was figuring out what kind of country it would become, communities across Long Island were building the institutions that would shape local civic and religious life.
Now: 18th-Century Jericho, Still Standing
The meeting house survives on Old Jericho Turnpike along with its historic cemetery and other elements of the complex – which means you can drive one of Nassau County’s busiest commercial corridors and, with one turn, encounter a place that would have been recognizable to people living during George Washington’s presidency.
The History Nassau County Didn’t Pave Over
There is no single “historic Nassau County” – and that’s what makes exploring its history so interesting. At Raynham Hall, the story is revolution and espionage, while at Rock Hall, it’s colonial wealth, labor and slavery. At Valley Road, it’s African American and Indigenous history and the building of a free Black community and, just a few miles away, there’s the Roslyn Grist Mill, which represents commerce and everyday work life. At Elderfields, centuries of history have been layered onto one property and, today, new art is being made inside it. Taken together, these places make America’s 250th anniversary feel less abstract and suddenly, 250 years doesn’t feel quite so far away.
This America250, explore the places where Nassau County’s past is still part of the present, often hiding in plain sight.
