'Nothing
left to save': Historian
Owner says he will raze Swezey House
Newsday
January 19, 1989
Swezey House after the fire. Photo by Jim McMahon.
'Nothing Left
To Save': Historian
Owner says he'll raze Swezey House
By Mitchell
Freedman
A suspicious
fire that gutted the pre-Revolution Swezey House in
Middle Island last weekend left nothing of historic value
salvageable, Brookhaven Town Historian David Overton
said.
Overton who
inspected the building yesterday said the fire destroyed
the 1 ½-story wooden structure, which was built between
1717 and 1740. ' 'There's nothing left to save. The walls
are all shot, nothing salvageable at all.''
The Saturday
night fire was the second in a year at the site. Last
spring, a barn on the property, which may have been older
than the house, burned down. "They caught two kids
[for that fire]" said Sal Malguarnera, owner of the
Swezey House property. Malguarnera wants to build on the
property through his Sala Development Crop.
The cause of
the latest blaze is under investigation.
Among the
oldest houses in Brookhaven, the Swezey house was
considered one of the most historically important
structures in the town because it remained on its
original location, on Old Middle Country Road, the site
of town's first colonial Post Road.
Last month, the
town broad gave the Swezey House landmark status, a
preliminary step toward forming a historic district that
would have made altering the house more difficult. But
that action would not prevent construction of a shopping
center-office complex proposed by Malguarnera for the
site. No town action was being planed to acquire the
property for preservation.
Malguarnera
said the Swezey house had been vandalized and graffiti
covered the inside walls. "Most of the windows were
broken. It needed work," he said.
The house had a
cyclone fence around it, but a hole apparently had been
cut in it. The electricity had been turned off, but late
last year, several neighbors complained to town officials
that children or vagrants had been using the house.
When the site
plan for the proposed shopping center on the
23,380-square- foot lot was filed last summer by the Sala
Development Corp, town officials complained the Swezey
house was not on the map. They told the developer to
redraw the map indicating the house's location.
Malguarnera
said yesterday that the house was in fact sited on the
plan but in a very light color that was difficult to see.
The property is zoned for business use, and the proposed
center would contain 2,900 square feet of retail stores
and 1,625 square feet of office space. He said plans
called for building the center without tearing down the
house.
Now that it has
been destroyed, he said that if the town declared it, an
unsafe structure, he expected to raze it.
Malguarnera
said the property's zoning would allow shopping center
construction, but that he took no action on the land
since filing the application because he wanted to see if
the town would try to rezone it for residential use.
"I lelt this piece alone," Malguarnera said.
"If the town in its wisdom made it residential. I
wouldn't have touched it."
Malguarnera
said he gave the local civic association permission to
put a fence around the property, and never asked for a
key for the padlock on the gate.
In the 1960s,
the property's previous owner, Emil Lengyel, operated a
small museum next to the house. Town historical surveys
say the Swezey house painted white with red shutters, had
a gabled roof, two fireplaces, and five small windows
under the front and rear eaves, an indication of Dutch
influence in home construction in central Suffolk before
the American Revolution.
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