The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a three-year, $3.75 million grant to Sylvester Manor Educational Farm (SMEF) on Shelter Island, New York, to expand capacity and support capital improvements to the farm’s centerpiece 18th-century manor house, the Shelter Island Reporter reports.

As part of Mellon’s Humanities in Place program, $2.5 million will be directed to the rehabilitation of the manor’s rear section, which dates from 1908, and establish the Center for History & Heritage, which will include office, exhibition, and program spaces, as well as space for artists and scholars-in-residence. In addition, the renovations will include elevators and ramps to bring the building into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The remaining $1.25 million will be used to expand staffing and fund programs, tours, exhibitions, and research.

The manor house and its surrounding 225 acres—the most intact former slaveholding plantation north of Virginia—were held by the Sylvester family from 1651 until the 2000s, before a series of conservation easements to the Peconic Land Trust and the final transfer of the manor house to SMEF in 2014. In 2022, Mellon provided funding to advance ongoing research into the lives of the enslaved and free people of color on the property, including those believed to be buried in the Afro-Indigenous burial ground.

“Today’s…grant 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,” said SMEF executive director Stephen Searl.

(Photo credit: Wikimapia/A Cronson)