Sag Harbor Village District

Sag Harbor Village District is a 300-acre area at the heart of the village on eastern Long Island, reaching south from the waterfront along Main, Madison, Division and Hampton Streets. Its buildings include 18th-century half houses, Federal dwellings, Greek Revival houses, and later Gothic Revival, Italianate and Victorian homes. Highlights include the temple-front Benjamin Huntting House, now a whaling museum, and the Egyptian Revival Whalers Presbyterian Church, both attributed to Minard LaFever. The village grew as a port, became the first U.S. Port of Entry in New York State in 1788, and ranked behind only New Bedford and Nantucket as a whaling port in the 1840s. Fires in 1817, 1845 and 1877 and the collapse of whaling brought decline, and a watch-case factory later sustained the economy. Because growth largely stopped around 1850, the village keeps an unusually intact streetscape of colonial and early 19th-century buildings.