An Ideal Choice

There’s a word for what’s driving the desire to relocate a historic windmill from the campus of Stony Brook Southampton back to its original home in Southampton Village: “covet.”

It really is that simple: A group of good-hearted residents regrets a decision made 141 years ago to move the 1713 windmill from its home, along the street that bears its name, to Shinnecock Hills, where it later became an integral part of the college campus.

“We are the only village on the East End that does not have a windmill. Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Water Mill, Bridgehampton — they all have their windmills,” a supporter of the move back to the village, Siamak Samii, pointed out. In other words, they covet that windmill.

But it’s odd to decide you want something back, and then simply lay claim to it. It’s like deciding that classic car you sold 30 years ago would look particularly good back in your garage — never mind that the current owner has no desire to sell.

The Southampton Village Windmill Project folks are not wrong: A historic windmill on Windmill Lane makes sense and would be wonderful. But there appears to be no reason to think New York State, which owns this particular windmill, has any desire to consider relocation.

That’s even more true now that Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. — a Southampton College alum, and a fierce supporter of keeping the historic structure right where it is — has nominated Stony Brook University for a $500,000 capital grant to restore and rehabilitate the windmill. That’s overdue: Storm damage from a few years ago was the latest blow, and proponents of moving the windmill back to the village have a point in noting that it hasn’t been cared for as well as it could have been over the years.

But now that it’s expected to get a sprucing up, it makes little sense to consider robbing the campus of its symbol since Southampton College was first established at the site in 1963.

There’s an answer to all of this, and Southampton Village Mayor Jesse Warren hinted at it in a recent discussion: “In the absolute worst-case scenario, if we are unable to get the windmill over here, we’d also be interested in having a conversation about a replica.”

He said it’s not the “ideal choice” — but we beg to differ. That’s a splendid solution: Let the historic structure stay where it has taken root, and pay tribute with a glorious replica, built with period-appropriate methods and materials, using donated funds raised by the Windmill Project, at a site on Windmill Lane.

Don’t covet your neighbor’s windmill — be inspired by it. That’s a project everyone could get behind.