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Community Corner

Museum Seeks $70k to Complete Sayre Barn Reconstruction

The barn dates back to 1825 and was a popular meeting place in Southampton Village's history.

The Southampton Historical Museum has begun the work of reconstructing a 1825 barn that is currently sited on the grounds of the Rogers Mansion in Southampton Village — but the museum is still $70,000 short of the total  needed to complete the project.

The Sayre Barn was closed in 2008 for safety reasons. The cost of rehabilitating it is $360,000 and the museum is hoping more locals will pitch in to help meet the goal so it can re-open.

According to the museum's research, the barn was built for the Huntting family but then sold a year later to its namesake, Isaac Sayre. It was originally located at the busy Main Street and Hampton Road intersection, where it was dubbed the "billboard barn" because of all the notices posted on it.

"In the 1920s the barn became an antique store and popular gathering place for locals and residents of the summer colony," the museum stated. "Gary Cooper, in later years, was a regular who used to buy a bag of crullers from a local bakery and share them with other customers in the antique store, including Zaza Gabor."

The Dimon family donated the barn to the museum in 1954, when it was moved to the Rogers Mansion grounds on Meeting House Lane. After being rolled down Main Street on logs to its new home, the barn became the museum's Old Country Store.

Strada Baxter Design, which is overseeing its restoration, began dismantling the barn on April 22, according to the museum, which stated that the firm was chosen because of its deep understanding of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Reconstruction of Historic Buildings.

The museum is aiming for the work to be done before its annual Harvest Day Fair coming on Sept. 28.

Donations are tax deductible, according to the museum. Check may be mailed to Southampton Historical Museum, PO Box 303, Southampton, NY 11969.











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