The historic Roslyn Grist Mill will be raised eight feet next week, according to the mill’s owners, the Roslyn Landmark Society.
In an email sent to its members, the society said that “teams of preservation specialists” would raise the centuries-old mill on Old Northern Boulevard next Thursday, beginning at 10 a.m.
The mill will be raised 8 feet, 4 inches above street level, and “workers will quickly add sections of timber cribbing to account for the additional height,” the society said.
The raising will allow workers to excavate the existing foundation and begin constructing a “new water-tight foundation.” At the same time, timber frame specialists will remove and restore the structure’s deteriorated columns and support beams.
Thursday will not mean the end of the project, however, and the society says that upon finishing the restoration of the whole property “later this year,” the mill will be lowered four feet to street level “in order to provide safe public access to the mill for future use as an education center.”
The mill, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, is one of only a few surviving Dutch-framed watermills built between 1715 and 1741 that were purposely built for industrial use rather than farming, and it was used for over 150 years.
The grist mill project is funded by about $3 million in donations from landmark society members and grants from foundations like the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Gerry Charitable Trust and the East Hampton-based Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. State agencies like the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the Regional Economic Development Council have also awarded grants for the project.
