East Hampton Village Green and the Windmills

English settlers, many of them tracing their roots to Maidstone in the county of Kent, crossed Long Island Sound and founded East Hampton in sixteen forty eight, first calling it Maidstone after their old home. They bought thousands of acres from the Montaukett people and laid out a broad common green beside a pond, and remarkably, that colonial layout is still intact today, one of the most beautiful village streets in America. Along James Lane you can see Home Sweet Home, a historic shingled house traditionally linked to the boyhood of John Howard Payne, the poet who wrote the beloved song Home, Sweet Home.

Next door stands the Gardiner Windmill, built in eighteen oh four by the master craftsman Nathaniel Dominy the Fifth, using timber floated over from Gardiner's Island. Up the green stands the Hook Mill of eighteen oh six, which the village bought in nineteen twenty two and which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. East Hampton is remarkable for its several historic windmills still standing, wooden reminders of the days when the wind ground the settlers' grain.