Sylvester Manor
About
Sylvester Manor, located on Shelter Island, today is a multi-faceted educational, agricultural, natural, and historic property.
Sylvester Manor’s mission today is to cultivate, preserve, and share the Manor’s history, telling the stories of all people who lived, worked, and died there.
In the mid-2000s, the Trust began working with the property's owner, Eben Fiske Ostby and his nephew, Bennett Konesni, to develop a conservation plan for the historic 240-acre property, which had been in continuous ownership by the family since 1651. Mr. Ostby and Mr. Konesni co-founded the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm.
In December 2009, Mr. Ostby donated a perpetual easement on 22 acres along Gardiners Creek to Peconic Land Trust; and in August 2012, Mr. Ostby donated 26 acres of farmland to the recently created non-profit, the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, allowing the nonprofit to sell the associated development rights to the County and Town, with additional funding from the Federal Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program.
In November 2012, Mr. Ostby donated to the non-profit a further 57acres along the eastern boundary of Sylvester Manor on Manhanset Road, from which Suffolk County and the Town of Shelter Island purchased the development rights. The purchase was funded with dedicated land protection funds: 70 percent by the County from its quarter percent Bonded Drinking Water Protection Farmland Preservation Program and 30% by the Town from its Community Preservation Fund, a 2% tax on real estate transactions. The development rights sale increased the permanently protected land at the Manor to more than 105 acres.
In 2014, Mr. Ostby donated the circa 1737 manor house, its grounds, barns, the 1810 windmill, farm fields, woodlands, wetlands and shorefront—a total of about 142 acres—to Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. This is in addition to the 83.5 acres previously donated to the educational farm in 2012. The family retains an 11- acre parcel along Gardiners Creek.
“I am thrilled that we were able to partner with all levels of government to protect this historic farmland. This is truly an enormous step in the preservation of Sylvester Manor and a major part of Shelter Island, and I thank everyone who worked to make it happen.”
Eben Fiske Ostby, Sylvester Manor owner and 10th-generation proprietor.
Sylvester Manor History
Sylvester Manor is on the ancestral land of the Indigenous Manhansett people, who lived on Shelter Island and used the land for fishing, hunting and small-scale crop production. Starting in 1651, the property became a provisioning plantation for the Barbadian sugar trade, worked by enslaved Africans, indentured or paid Native American and European laborers. The 1737 Manor house was established on fertile land at the head of a protected harbor on Shelter Island and served as a residence for one of America’s first food industrialists (and an inventor of baking powder), Eben Norton Horsford, as well as functioning as a farm for the past two centuries, serving regional markets.
The Georgian Manor house was home to 10 generations of the original European settler family and from the 17th – 19th centuries, was a place of enslavement of African people.
Sylvester Manor’s mission today is to cultivate, preserve, and share the Manor’s history, telling the stories of all people who lived, worked, and died there.
In addition to being a working farm, the property is an important early American archaeological site complemented by over 20,000 primary documents — family papers, books and letters, archived at New York University’s Fales Library and remaining in the Manor house collection. The University of Massachusetts in Boston has held an archaeological field school on the property intermittently since 1998 and continues to excavate new sites and research the artifacts found.
Sylvester Manor is working to re-establish agriculture on Shelter Island in a sustainable way. Long a part of the Island’s heritage, active farming died out on Shelter Island in the 1980s, a demise attributed to residential development and an overpopulation of deer. The preservation of Manor land under the County’s farmland program will guarantee that all activities on the preserved land are agricultural in nature.
Visitor Information
Sylvester Manor is a 240-acre historic plantation and nonprofit educational farm on Shelter Island, NY, engaging all ages in farm-based and cultural programs.
To learn more about visiting hours, including tours of the Manor house, and its farmstand dates and hours, check out their website www.sylvestermanor.org. Trails closed seasonally from October through the end of February.
Sylvester Manor
80 N Ferry Rd, Shelter Island, NY 11964
Things To Do
Hiking
Birdwatching
Photography
Nature Study
Visit a Farmstand/Tasting Room
Get Involved
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as Sylvester Manor Educational Farm
Interested in Sylvester Manor's Community Supported Agriculture share program? Visit them online.
