{"nrhp_refnum":"85002425","name":"Sands-Willets Homestead","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"336 Port Washington Blvd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Port Washington","county":"Nassau County","state":"NY","lat":40.815583924000066,"lon":-73.68037412899997,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1985-09-19","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Exploration/Settlement","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A twenty-room, two-story shingled farmhouse on just under one acre in Flower Hill, Port Washington, Nassau County, New York, with a c. 1735 west wing, a Greek Revival main block built c. 1835 and enlarged c. 1850, a colonial-period garden, and a late 1600s barn moved to the site in 1978.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the homestead reflects the area's early settlement and illustrates Long Island's conservative building tradition across the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is described as a rare surviving homestead in densely built-up Port Washington. It is also tied to the Sands family, including Revolutionary War figures born there, and to the later Willets family.","narrative":"This farmhouse in Flower Hill, Port Washington, grew in three stages on a single site. The oldest part is a west wing of about 1735, originally a freestanding story-and-a-half dwelling. A Greek Revival half-house followed around 1835 and was extended west around 1850 into a center-hall residence with four end chimneys. The Sands family, early landowners on Cow Neck, held the property; Colonel John Sands IV, a Revolutionary War militia leader, and his brothers were born in the house. Edmund Willets, a New York City merchant, bought the homestead in 1846 and expanded it, and his descendants farmed the land into the twentieth century. The grounds include a colonial-style garden with old boxwoods and a late 1600s barn rebuilt there in 1978 after being moved from Sands Point. The barn is described as one of the rare seventeenth-century barns on Long Island. The Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society bought the property in the 1960s and operates it as a house museum.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"John Sands II, John Sands III","architectural_style":"Greek Revival (main house), with a c. 1735 colonial west wing and Colonial Revival porch and porte-cochère","criteria":[],"status_note":"Owned and maintained as a house museum by the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, which restored the house wing, the main section and the barn; the house had been unoccupied for several years before the 1960s acquisition.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:45.354121-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/85002425.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85002425/c0b1045a25-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85002425/c0b1045a25-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"AITFFan1","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sands%E2%80%93Willets_House,_Flower_Hill,_NY_May_6,_2023_B.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">AITFFan1</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sands%E2%80%93Willets_House,_Flower_Hill,_NY_May_6,_2023_B.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319197","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sands-Willets_Homestead","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7416888"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/nassau-county/sands-willets-homestead-85002425/"}