Keeping History Alive

Members of the Southampton Town Board should be congratulated for their efforts in recent weeks to preserve a piece of the town’s history.

The Topping-Raynor House on South Road in Westhampton was built in 1890 for Charles Topping, who sold it to William Clark Raynor in 1911. The house remained in the Raynor family until 1961.

Early last month, the Town Board agreed to designate the old homestead as a historic landmark, and last week agreed to purchase an historic easement on the facade of the house, using $100,000 in Community Preservation Fund revenue.

Sadly, the old homestead has fallen into disrepair, too much for its current owner, Eleanor Daly Kobel, whose family bought the house in 1961, to keep up with. It’s historic designation will allow Ms. Kobel to apply to the state for up to $20,000 per year in preservation grants, and the CPF money will help, of course. Ms. Kobel, who visited the home every summer when she was young, estimates that it could take as much as $250,000 to fully restore the house.

The designation was based on the life of Louise Preston Raynor, who sold the home to Ms. Kobel’s family before moving to an adjacent property. Ms. Raynor was the first woman to receive a Suffolk County commercial fishing license, in 1943. The family also managed the Westhampton Yacht Squadron.

The CPF historic preservation and conservation easement will protect the home in perpetuity, even if it changes hands, forever protecting the history of its previous owners, who helped shape the development of the area as a whole.

While it’s improbable that George Washington ever slept there, or that Jackson Pollock painted there, the house is no less important to the history of the area, and local residents should breathe a sigh of relief that the Town Board has the foresight — and the tools, via an active CPF program — to ensure that the memories it contains won’t be lost to overeager developers, or simply to time itself.