page_title: Sag Harbor Whaling Museum
section_title: Building
hierarchical_section_title: Sag Harbor Whaling Museum / Building
caption_attribution_description: English: Solveig Jacobsen on the Grytviken flensing plan
context_page_description: Sag Harbor Whaling Museum is a museum in Sag Harbor, New York, dedicated to the town's past as a prosperous whaling port. It houses the largest collection of whaling equipment in the state of New York.
context_section_description: The building that now houses the museum was built in 1845 by prosperous merchant whaler Benjamin Huntting II at the height of the town's maritime prosperity.  Designed by Minard Lafever, the house is an elaborate Greek revival structure with a temple-front portico and fluted Corinthian columns. In an unusual homage to the source of Huntting's fortune, Lafever edged the roof line with a row of decorative crenallation in the form of alternating flensing knives and blubber spades. An enormous pair of whale jawbones frame the front door. Inside, an elegant staircase spirals upward toward a domed skylight. The AIA Architectural Guide calls it "Long Island's finest example of high style Greek revival architecture." The house is "enormous in scale" compared to the usual American Greek Revival houses of the era, and the architect embellished it with some eclectic touches.
  In 1907 the house was purchased by philanthropist Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage (Mrs. Russell Sage), who lived there in the summers until her death in 1918.
  It then became a Masonic Temple in 1920. In 1945 the lower floors were acquired by the whaling museum, though the upper floor is still owned and used by the Freemasons.  The building has been open to the public since 1945 as the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum.
caption: Men using flensing knives to cut up a whale.
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