Harbor Road Historic District

Harbor Road in Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington, runs along the steep eastern shore of the harbor and holds a district of about 45 acres with eighteen contributing buildings. It preserves the village's earliest settlement area, developed by the Jones and Hewlett families, who founded a grist mill in 1791 and built up woolen factories, shipyards, brickyards and a whaling company. The site of that mill, destroyed by fire in 1921, remains undeveloped and may hold archeological evidence. Most houses are early nineteenth-century dwellings with three-bay side-hall or five-bay center-entrance plans and restrained Federal and Greek Revival details, somewhat larger than comparable houses elsewhere in the village. Many gained bay windows, brackets, wings and porches when the harbor became a fashionable summer resort after the whaling era ended. Examples include the Italianate Townsend Jones House and the Victorian Owl's Cote of 1869. The Townsend Jones House also has an interior remodelled around 1900 by architect Stanford White.