History

The Mill House, located just off 9W, five miles north of Newburgh, NY, on the Hudson River, is the oldest house on the National Register of Historic Places in Orange County and the earliest surviving Jewish residence in North America. It has been continuously inhabited for more than 280 years.

It would indeed be difficult to find a landmark more richly intertwined with our complex history, or complex fate: site of an ancient Indian ceremonial ground; frontier trading post; earliest extant Jewish residence in North America; center of patriot activity in the American Revolution; home of writers and artists and men of affairs; the Mill House symbolizes and sums up our regional and national history. It is a most dramatic and absolutely irreplaceable incarnation of American history.

The most famous owner in the 20th century was Dard Hunter, renowned craftsman and paper maker who, just before World War I, built a paper mill on the creek in the shape of a “Devonshire cottage” complete with a thatched roof. Students from all over the world came to learn from him as he made paper by hand, cut and cast type and handprinted his own books. The Gomez Foundation for Mill House has restored Hunter’s Mill and completed in 1997 the mill dam and bridge.After World War II, the Starin family purchased the house with a G.I. loan. They raised their children here while Mildred Starin enriched the house, furnishings and garden and placed the site on the National Register.