Nathaniel Dominy V

Nathaniel Dominy V (1770–1852) built the two windmills that anchor East Hampton Village's historic districts: the Gardiner Mill on James Lane in 1804 and the Hook Mill at the north end of Main Street in 1806. The Village's historic preservation consultant calls him the most active cabinetmaker and millwright in a family of East Hampton woodworkers and clockmakers, and records that five of the six Long Island windmills he built between 1795 and 1815 survive.

He is on this list as a builder, not as a furniture maker. The windmills are timber-framed structures, and the Village's restoration records describe the framing, joinery and machinery as the measure of his skill. They are also the reason two of the Village's open spaces exist in their present form.

Neither mill is a residence. The reason they matter to a house buyer is the protected setting around them, which shapes what can be built nearby.

The documented work

The Gardiner Mill, 1804. Built on the James Lane home lot of John Lyon Gardiner, seventh proprietor of Gardiner's Island, with white oak felled on the island. Hefner describes it as the first of a new model, built to run two pairs of millstones rather than one, with hand-planed timbers and the finest interior finish of any Long Island windmill. The Village bought and restored it; the 1996 restoration used traditional scarf joints secured with wood pins, long shingles to restore the original exterior, a new windshaft modeled on the surviving Dominy windshaft at the Gardiner's Island mill, and sails built to plans drawn in 1889 by Nathaniel Dominy VII.

The Hook Mill, 1806. On the Memorial Green at the north end of Main Street, on an artificial mound beside the North End Cemetery. The Village bought the Hook Mill green from the Dominy family within two years of the Village's 1920 incorporation, and Hefner calls the 1922 purchase the first preservation of a historic landmark on the South Fork.

The Dominy House, 1715 (demolished). The family house at the southwest corner of North Main and Cedar Streets held Nathaniel Dominy's woodworking and clock shops with his tools and machinery. It was demolished in 1946. The loss is part of why the Village later moved to protect the mills' settings.

Where the work concentrates

Both surviving mills are inside the Village of East Hampton, each at the center of a locally designated historic district:

• The Gardiner Mill sits within the Main Street Historic District, designated in 1986. Its setting is the Gardiner Home Lot, which Hefner describes as the last intact home lot from the 1648 settlement. A 1994 subdivision kept the front five acres intact, put the front three acres of the field under an agricultural easement and added a visual easement from the field to the mill.
• The Hook Mill sits within The Hook Historic District, designated in 1996. The district's open greens, cemetery and the mill form its center, and the boundary was drawn around the intact historic buildings that face them.

What this means for property near the mills

The mills are public landmarks, but their settings constrain private land. In a Village historic district, the Design Review Board reviews exterior alteration, demolition and new construction and issues a certificate of appropriateness (its written approval that a change fits the district) before work proceeds. Near the mills, the open-space relationships the districts were drawn to protect, such as the view from the field to the Gardiner Mill and the treeless setting of the Hook Mill, are part of what a board weighs.

The Gardiner Home Lot is the clearest example of how this plays out: a subdivision was approved, but only in a form that kept the field and the view to the mill. A buyer of land in either district should read the district designation, any easements in the chain of title and the approval history of neighboring lots before assuming what can be built.

See Renovating and rebuilding for the review sequence and Half-houses and saltboxes for the house forms of the same period.

What to know if you're buying or selling nearby

Check the district, not the address. Main Street and Pantigo Road properties can fall inside or just outside a district line. Confirm it on the Village's district map and in the designation.

Ask for easements. Agricultural and visual easements recorded with a subdivision bind later owners. They appear in the title report, and their terms decide what can be planted, fenced or built.

Considering a property in the Main Street or Hook districts?

Request a property brief that confirms district status, reads recorded easements and prior Design Review Board approvals, and places the house against comparable Village sales.