Raynham Hall Museum

Raynham Hall is in Oyster Bay, New York. Home of the Townsend family, one of the founding families of Oyster Bay, on Long Island, New York, and a member of George Washington's Culper Ring of spies, the house was renamed Raynham Hall after the Townsend seat in Norfolk, England, in 1850 by a grandson of the original owner. The house is now owned by the Town of Oyster Bay and operated as a public museum by the Friends of Raynham Hall Museum, Inc. Raynham Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a Town of Oyster Bay Landmark, and is a featured site on the Oyster Bay History Walk audio walking tour. It is located at 20 West Main Street, right in the heart of Oyster Bay.

Raynham Hall was built in 1738 as a "two by two," or two rooms on the first floor with two rooms above it and a central chimney. After Samuel Townsend bought the house and moved in he added onto the home four more rooms giving the newly dubbed "Homestead" a lean-to addition in the saltbox-style structure. The home remained this way until in 1851 when Solomon Townsend remade the house in the Victorian style, adding carpeting, highly decorated wallpaper, ornate furnishings, a central tower onto the houses exterior with a skylight, as well as an entire new wing to the home. Renaming the house "Raynham Hall," Solomon projected his wealth and affluence where his colonial Quaker counterparts lived a much more conservative style.
In 1941, the family no longer had the wealth to retain the house and handed the deed over to the Daughters of the American Revolution's local chapter in Oyster Bay. The maintenance of the house was too much, and finally the home was granted to the Town of Oyster Bay. After deliberation it was decided that Raynham Hall would continue as a part of Oyster Bay as a historic home and museum to represent the Colonial and Victorian lifestyles of the Townsend family.

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