55th Annual Delaware Show

In 1798 Nathaniel IV constructed a clock shop at the southeast corner of the house, built around a chimneystack containing a flue for a forge on one side and hearth on the other. Craftsmen there made some 80 cast-brass clock works, from simple to complex, for the next thirty years. Although they made no watches, Nathaniel IV and Felix did a brisk business repairing them. Their affordable rates attracted many clients from Suffolk County and coastal eastern Connecticut, and Felix listed more than 1,000 in a separate book for watch repairs. After 1810, cabinetmakers newly arrived in the village of Sag Harbor began to compete with the Dominys for market share. In 1823 businessman Nathan Tinker advertised a “furniture warehouse,” well stocked with readymade furniture purchased wholesale in New York City and shipped up the Sound. After some seventy-five years supplying the needs of the community, the Dominy furniture business was undercut by the availability of stylish, inexpensive factory-made furniture. Similarly, the death knell for the Dominy clockmaking business was sounded with the advent of mass-produced, low-cost Connecticut shelf clocks. Priced out of the market, the Dominys stopped making clocks altogether in 1828. By 1835, at age 65, Nathaniel V pulled back from full-time woodworking. That same year, no longer able to earn a living from clockmaking and watch repair, Felix (fig. 6) moved from East Hampton for more lucrative work as keeper of the Fire Island lighthouse. By 1844 he was managing a summer hotel on Fire Island, and from 1861 to his death, in 1868, he owned and managed the Dominy House, a resort hotel in Bay Shore . The family house, shops, and all contents passed to descendant Nathaniel VII and, after his death in 1910, to his son, Charles Mulford Dominy, also a woodworker. By 1940, the homestead had fallen into disrepair; fearing its loss, the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) dispatched a team to document the structure with photographs and measured drawings (figs. 7a, 7b). The following year Charles sold the property. The new owner offered to sell the structure to the town for a museum, but funds were not raised. Fortunately, before the house was dismantled in 1946, Charles’ children removed equipment and tools from both shops for safekeeping, storing larger items in the barn of a Southampton antiques dealer and placing hand tools, shop records, and family papers on loan at the East Hampton Historical Society and East Hampton Free Library. As demolition began, a private Fig. 6. Felix Dominy, ca. 1860, by New York photographer R. A. Lewis. Courtesy East Hampton Historical Society — 118 —