Preservation Trust Buys Old Mill Building

This spring, a hidden Vineyard gem on Edgartown-West Tisbury Road will start a new chapter in its over 300 year history.

The Vineyard Preservation Trust recently acquired the Old Mill from the Garden Club, Trust staff told the Gazette. The building, purchased for $1, is the Trust’s 20th acquisition, and its first in 10 years.

“This is what I was hoping we would be able to achieve, of making it an Island building rather than a Garden Club only building,” said Susan Hobart, former president of the Garden Club. “I just feel that the building should be shared.”

While the Garden Club will continue to host meetings and their annual Blooming Art show in the building, the Trust plans to increase public use of the Old Mill through potential tours, historical initiatives, events and art shows. After minor upkeep and repairs, the mill will open to the public in the early summer.

“We’re really kind of looking at it to honor the historic uses of the property and potentially open it for more educational opportunities,” said Nevette Previd, executive director of the Trust. “It’s a nice addition to our West Tisbury collection.”

The Trust’s West Tisbury holdings also include the Grange Hall, Alley’s General Store and the old West Tisbury Library.

The current structure was built in 1848 and is listed on the National Historic Register, but its roots as a mill go back much futher, to the mid 1600s when it operated as a grist mill for about a century, grinding corn powered by its classic undershot water wheel on the Mill Pond’s dam.

The mill transitioned in the early 1800s into a wool processing factory, carding, spinning and weaving wool with the same water power. Among the fabrics it produced was the Vineyard’s famous satinet, a waterproof wool blend useful to the whaling industry’s wet work on the water.

Some of the wool-processing equipment, such as bobbins and looms, remains in the building, and were loaned to the MV Museum a few years ago for an exhibit on the textiles, said Ms. Hobart. Her vision is to exhibit the equipment at the mill, and Ms. Previd said the Trust hopes to install descriptions of the mill’s extensive history.

“It will just provide depth to the Vineyard experience in West Tisbury history, which was really an agrarian community,” said Ms. Hobart.

The Trust is also partnering with the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank with the goal of connecting the Old Mill to the rest of downtown West Tisbury, and to the larger trail system on the Vineyard. The Land Bank hopes to install a path to take visitors from the library, over Mill Brook, and into the historic mill.

“[The mill] is intrinsically beautiful in its own right, but the goal is to link it up with various neighborhoods and conversation areas,” said James Lengyel, executive director of the Land Bank.

At the end of its wool-processing days in the late 19th century, the mill wheel was sold to a local blacksmith. The building was then used as a tea room and auction house before falling into disrepair in the early 1900s.

The Garden Club stepped in to save the dilapidated mill from being torn down in 1937, purchasing and restoring it in 1942. Since then, the mill has been the “heart of the garden club,” said Ms. Hobart. The club meets in the mill and hosts its annual Blooming Art exhibit there, and through fundraising efforts has been able to keep up with repairs over the years.

But as an all-volunteer organization, the Garden Club does not have the capacity to maintain and exhibit the building in the way it should be, Ms. Hobart said. She would like to see it become an essential part of historical West Tisbury and the wider Island community.

The Trust’s new stewardship of the building opens up the mill for more potential uses, said Ms. Previd. Among the uses that she and Ms. Hobart suggested are week-long art gallery openings, small weddings, educational field trips and picnics on a summer day on the moss-covered grounds by the bubbling brook.

“The Garden Club still gets to enjoy it, but now the good thing is the public gets to enjoy this beautiful building and the lands around it,” said current Garden Club president Anne Kushwaha. “We think it’s just in great hands by moving the land and the building to the nonprofits that specialize in restoring buildings and connecting trails.”

Ms. Previd reflected on the beauty of the place itself.

“It’s tucked below the street, and so you’re just kind of hugged in this envelope, this little fairy land,” she said. “It’s really special, and we’re excited, as is the Garden Club, to really show it off.”

This article appears in March 20, 2026.