The Dodge House in Port Washington, built by Thomas
Dodge in 1721, is one of the oldest homes in the town of North Hempstead. The
house's architecture maintains much of its original Colonial and 19th-century
flavor and family relics, including farm tools and original furnishings.
The Dodge homestead was part of a working farm for
more than 200 years, acquired by the first Thomas Dodge on 350 acres that
originally extended to Hempstead Harbor. William Dodge, Thomas Dodge’s son and
the coroner for Queens County, began selling most of the property as a legacy
for his children. When William's son Henry Onderdonk Dodge, died in 1898, his
children sold the farm to developers.
In 1721, the interior
included an entrance hall, a living room with a fireplace for cooking and heat
and an upstairs with two bedrooms. Thomas Dodge added a dining room
with a larger fireplace, a kitchen, and a weaving room. The original low
ceilings with exposed hand-hewn beams still exist and all of the first floor
rooms have 18th-century tongue-and-groove flooring and walls. In the late
1900s, the house was expanded and modernized; porches were added and dormers
were built on the second story.
The original kitchen, which included a Dutch oven was
also replaced with more modern, Victorian decor. A cast-iron stove for cooking,
a galvanized sink with a water pump, soapstone tubs closets and a pantry were
added. Heat was supplied with potbelly and Franklin stoves until 1910, when
central heating was installed.
The Dodge House was leased to the Cow Neck Peninsula
Historical Society by the Water Pollution Control District in 1993 to be
restored and operated as a public museum. The museum includes the 19th-century
outbuildings -- a chicken coop, a privy with a child's footrest, a wood shed
and a two-door horse barn.
The Dodge house and its outbuildings have been listed
on the National and State Registers of Historic Places since 1986. The home is
also a designated landmark of the Town of North Hempstead's Historic Landmark
Preservation Commission.
Source:
Hochman, Nancy S.
"270-Year-Old Dodge House Now a Museum." New York Times,
26 May, 1996, pp. 6-15. ProQuest,
https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/270-year-old-dodge-house-now-museum/docview/430567054/se-
