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Billiou-Stilwell-Perine House
1476 Richmond Road in Dongan Hills
Built 1670s
A one-and-one-half story farmhouse, built of Dutch-construction, rough cut fieldstone with a steep, medieval-style roof and enormous Dutch fireplace. Pierre Billiou was one of Staten Island’s earliest Walloon settlers. His son-in-law, Captain Thomas Stilwell, who added a section to the house in 1700, was an English adventurer from Gravesend, Brooklyn. The 1700 section has a beautifully paneled fireplace with a feather-edged partition. Later additions were made to the house in 1750, 1790, and 1830. The Perines owned the house during the Revolution when Richmond Road was the King’s Highway and a stagecoach route. The house is owned by the Staten Island Historical Society and is open to the public.
Conference House (formerly the Billopp House)
Foot of Hylan Boulevard in Tottenville
Built 1680s
Christopher Billopp, a captain in the British Navy, built this two-and-one-half fieldstone manor house. It is the only surviving 17th century manor house on Staten Island. It was the setting for an attempted peace conference on September 11, 1776 when Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Benjamin Rutledge traveled there from Philadelphia. Their refusal to accept an offer by the British to return to the fold and renounce independence set the course for the nation’s founding. The house was then owned by another Christopher Billopp, a Tory, and was confiscated after the Revolution. The house is now a museum of colonial architecture and is open to the public.
Manee-Seguine Homestead
509 Seguine Avenue in Prince’s Bay
Built 1690s
Typical of rubblestone and clapboard houses built by early settlers, it consists of a single-story rubblestone section and smaller two-story wood frame section added early in the 18th century. A mid-18th century addition has a spring eave roof reflecting Abraham Manee’s French Huguenot family background. The Seguines owned the house after 1780. Once their oystering fortune was made, the Seguines built a finer residence overlooking Prince’s Bay. However, they owned the old house until 1867. Stephen Purdy bought it in 1874 and ran it as a Purdy’s Hotel for beach visitors. Today it is a private residence.
Alice Austen House
2 Hylan Boulevard in Rosebank
Built 1690s
Originally a one-room Dutch-construction stone dwelling and elaborated in the mid-19th century into a romantic Victorian villa, the house known as “Clear Comfort” sits on a bluff overlooking the Narrows. John Austen bought the house in 1844 and inserted Gothic Revival dormers into the Dutch-style roof, added a scalloped shingle roof, and decorated the whole with gingerbread. James Renwick oversaw the renovations soon after he finished building Grace Church in Manhattan. John Austen’s granddaughter was the pioneer photographer Alice Austen, who lived here for seventy years from 1866 to 1952. Alice Austen made over 7,000 glass negative images noted for their realism of sights all over New York, but many showed her home in its spectacular setting, her friends, and their social gatherings and activities. The house has been restored as a museum dedicated to her work and life.
Historic Richmond Town
Richmond Road and Arthur Kill Road
The mainly 19th century village restoration also includes three 17th century houses. The Britton Cottage, built around 1670 and added to throughout the 18th century, a stone and clapboard farmhouse, is considered an outstanding example of the Dutch vernacular architecture of Staten Island. The Voorlezer’s House, built around the same time, is a small frame building that served as the first schoolhouse in America. The Treasure House was built in the late 1690s. It is a simple clapboard structure in which a hidden treasure of British coins was found hidden in the walls in 1860.
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