The centuries of change witnessed by Staten Island’s Britton Cottage are visible in the strata of materials that make up the over 350-year-old house. At the centre is a fieldstone structure dating to 1670 and the early days of New York City’s colonisation. Flanking it are mid-18th-century wood-frame additions with weathered clapboard. Most significant in its years of transformation is its location. Once it was in the waterfront neighbourhood of New Dorp Beach; since 1965, it has been preserved at Historic Richmond Town. The planned construction of a parkway, under the infamous urban planner Robert Moses, had threatened it with demolition.
“Richmond Town, who had stewardship of the house at the time, had to scramble to dismantle parts of it that couldn’t be moved whole and move the frame parts that could be,” says Russell Powell, a restoration carpenter who has been working with Richmond Town since the 1980s.
The cottage is one of around 30 historic buildings that are part of the museum complex, all but ten of which were relocated there to protect them from being lost to development or deterioration. With the support of more than $2.1m in funding announced in September 2025 through the New York City Council, Britton Cottage is now undergoing a major restoration to open to the public for the first time since 1967. It gets its name from its most famous owner, Nathaniel Lord Britton who, with his wife, fellow botanist Elizabeth, co-founded the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) in the Bronx…