Luxury builder seeks to demolish historic Quogue home, link to Black history

A luxury home developer wants to raze Jessup Manor, a 127-year-old home in Quogue that local historians say represents a key link to Black and Indigenous history on the East End.

The proposal has prompted a grassroots campaign to save the home at 107 Jessup Ave. before the Village of Quogue can approve its demolition to make way for a seven-bedroom home.

The manor was built in 1899 by Abram Edwin Enos, a Black Civil War veteran, according to the Quogue Historical Society.

It later became Shinnecock Arms, a boarding house and a summer hotel listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book, the widely used guide identifying safe lodging and services for Black Americans during the Jim Crow era.

A local luxury homebuilder is asking the Village of Quogue’s permission to knock down the structure and replace it with a larger, seven-bedroom house. In response, the Quogue Historical Society launched a letter-writing campaign urging officials to preserve the manor and convert it into a museum.

“There is really nothing else like this in Quogue. It is a last vestige of Black and Shinnecock history,” said Pi Gardiner, the village historian and co-chair of the historical society board.

A last link

In its earliest years, the home belonged to Enos, a Civil War veteran and the grandson of a formerly enslaved man who owned land in Quogue as early as 1841, according to Gardiner. Enos built the house for his family, which included his wife, Mary Nancy Lee, a member of the Shinnecock Nation and whose family played a prominent role in the region’s whaling industry, Gardiner said.

Lee helped found what would become St. Paul’s A.M.E. Zion Church in the early 20th century. Today, the church and the Jessup Avenue house are considered the last remaining buildings tied to Quogue’s Black community, which formed in the mid-1800s and expanded over the next century. It has since declined over the past 40 years, historians said.

After Enos’ death in 1920, his daughter, Mathilda “Tillie” Enos Dent, converted the home into Shinnecock Arms, a boarding house for domestic workers who accompanied wealthy summer residents to the South Fork, according to the historical society.

In 1938, Shinnecock Arms was listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book. A 1954 article in The New York Age described it as “the oldest summer hotel" for Black Long Islanders.

Grassroots effort

Brenda Simmons, president of the Southampton African American Museum, said preserving the site is especially important amid what she described as the erasure of African American history.

“A lot of us are now banding together to make sure, if there’s any way possible, that this place will not be demolished,” she said.

The property holds architectural significance, said Chester Murray, co-chair of the Quogue Historical Society.

“It is an example of Victorian architecture that captures the boarding house-era here in Quogue. It's one of the few remaining,” he said.

The manor was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. Murray and Gardiner said the threat to raze Jessup Manor underscores the limited protections for historic properties in the village.

The historical society is hoping Southampton Town can purchase the property using its community preservation fund and convert and manage the home as a museum.

A potential purchase requires a willing seller. The current owners are under contract with custom homebuilder Nick Messina of SummerHouse Builders, who plans to redevelop the property.

Messina did not return a request for comment. Mark Knox, who owns the home with family members, declined to comment.

Supervisor Maria Moore said the town is open to purchasing Jessup Manor. If the owner is willing to sell, “we could then proceed and get the appraisals and make an offer and hopefully save the structure,” Moore said in an interview.

The village’s design review board is considering Messina's plan. The board is scheduled to meet and continue reviewing the application on Aug. 21.