Sands-Willets House
A Tale of Two Chimneys
by Chris Bain
If you own an old home, you know how costly repairs can appear out of nowhere. If your old home is also a house-museum, like the Sands-Willets House, it may contain thousands of historic artifacts with unique storage needs. Picture our Costume Archive Room full of carefully labeled archival boxes containing everything from dresses to hats and shoes and much more, each carefully wrapped in acid-free tissue. A water leak from a 175-year-old chimney could destroy centuries of artifacts. If the leaking water continued its downward path, the Formal Dining Room below the Costume Room could lose its plaster ceiling, not to mention the crystal chandelier and the rest of the furniture and artifacts.
Unfortunately, this is the scenario we’ve been experiencing. Several chimney repairs were attempted, such as replacing the copper flashing, yet the water continued dripping into buckets during especially windy rainstorms. The chimney experts scratched their heads and offered additional explanations.
When part of the ceiling in the Costume Room collapsed onto the floor in early 2024 it was time for a more drastic approach. One expert had offered the radical plan to remove 11 feet of chimney from the top clear down into the attic. They would then rebuild a brand-new chimney starting in the attic, up through the roof and back up to its original height, replacing the roofing materials, the flashing, all of it, as if it were a new house.
A year and multiple rainstorms later, the leak is but a memory and the new chimney, the Costume Room, and the Formal Dining Room are dry as a bone.
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NOTE: When the work is complete and the rooms are restored to their useful and beautiful selves in early July 2025, we'll post photographs of the rooms, made whole once again.
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We truly appreciate our Society members and donors whose contributions make it possible to maintain this wonderful old house-museum.
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If you are a member and/or donor, we thank you. If you are not yet a member of Port Washington's historical society, we invite you to join us, and thus help us with these types of surprises!
Mason contractor building the new chimney in the attic
Water damage to plaster ceiling in the Costume Archive room.
Water damage to the plaster ceiling in the Formal Dining Room on the ground floor
We are eternally grateful to the Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation for their strong financial support of this project. It would not have been possible otherwise.
