| Edification value |  |
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| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? |  |
| Time spent | 65 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | As is very often the case with historic houses, I was enamored of the Conference House kitchen, which includes the original open hearth stove. I wouldn’t want to have to cook there, especially not in the summer. But it’s neat to look at.
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Far, far away, on the southern shore of Staten Island, is an old farmhouse. And I mean, pretty darn old. The Billopp House, better known as Conference House, dates to around 1675. Wyckoff House in Brooklyn and Bowne House in Queens are older. And there are four houses in Staten Island that are older, too. I suppose Staten Islanders don’t tear stuff down as aggressively as they do in other boroughs.
Anyway, Billopp House survives not through an accident of fate or because the Billopps themselves did anything particularly great or notorious. Rather, it survives because of a single afternoon there in 1776. Continue reading “Conference House”