Over one weekend in early November, customers at Sweet Harbor Coffee on Old Northern Boulevard ordered 527 Roslyn Lattes, and the cafe turned those sales into a $2,500 donation to the Roslyn Landmark Society. The money goes toward restoration work on the Van Nostrand-Starkins House on Main Street, a house museum whose oldest section dates to about 1680 and which the Society describes as the oldest house in Nassau County.

The fundraiser ran from Friday, November 6 through Sunday, November 8, and the Society announced the total on November 10. The drink itself is staying around: Sweet Harbor now keeps the Roslyn Latte as an off-menu item, so anyone can still walk in and ask for it by name.

What is in a Roslyn Latte

The Roslyn Latte is a vanilla latte finished with a layer of vanilla cold foam. During the fundraiser weekend, the Society asked customers to post their cups on Instagram and tag both the cafe and the Society.

Sweet Harbor Coffee opened in the fall of 2025 at 1353 Old Northern Boulevard, beside the Roslyn Grist Mill. Owner Alexis Jensen grew up in Roslyn and ran coffee shops in Brooklyn before she and her husband, Joe, came back to open the cafe in the village.

The house the lattes are helping

The Van Nostrand-Starkins House stands at 221 Main Street. Architectural evidence places its earliest framing at about 1680. The first written record is the 1790 federal census, which lists William Van Nostrand as head of the household. In 1795 he sold the house to Joseph Starkins, a blacksmith, and his wife, Ann Elizabeth, whose family held it until 1847.

The building changed a great deal over the next century and a half. Between about 1740 and 1810, sills, studs, joists and floorboards were replaced and a smaller fireplace was built. An east room went on between 1810 and 1840, a Greek Revival remodel followed after 1840, and a bay window and dormers were added before 1875. The Kirby family, who bought it in 1849, owned it until 1937.

The Village of Roslyn acquired the property in 1966. From 1973 to 1977 the Landmark Society, working with a New York State grant and architectural historian John Stevens, restored the house to roughly how it looked around 1800. It has operated as a house museum since 1977. Inside are period furnishings, including a Kirby family lowboy and kas (a large Dutch-style cupboard), and the cellar displays artifacts found during a 1982 archaeological dig on the site.

A $21,000 goal

The latte weekend feeds a larger online campaign the Society is running for the house, with a goal of $21,000. Residents who missed the weekend can still give through the Society's Givebutter campaign page, and the Society says every gift goes to the care of the house. The Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has not yet published a detailed scope or schedule for the repairs.

More preservation work in the village

The house is not the only Roslyn landmark getting attention this month. On November 3 the Society reported that crews had started repairing the steps and improving drainage around the Roslyn Paper Mill in Gerry Park. The work follows roof and other improvements the Town of North Hempstead began in 2023 under its capital plan. The Onderdonk family ran a paper mill on that site starting in 1773. The original building came down in a winter storm in 1906, and the current structure is a 1915 replica built by Harold Godwin, a grandson of the poet William Cullen Bryant.

How to go

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