Wind Power at the Eustis Estate

Historic New England’s Study Center, housed at the Eustis Estate in Milton, Massachusetts, is our organization’s academic research arm. Each year, the Study Center hosts research fellows who investigate topics related to our historic properties and collections. Fellow Justin Kedl painstakingly reconstructed plans for an electric wind turbine (what we colloquially call a windmill) that used to power the Eustis Estate. Designed by owner W. E. C. Eustis, the windmill operated from the 1890s to the 1930s. The Eustis family removed the turbine in 1938 and no plans for its construction have been found. Kedl used a creative array of sources, ranging from newspaper articles, patents, and personal letters to physical evidence etched into the estate’s floors and rafters, to produce measured drawings and schematics of the turbine and its constituent parts.

We talked to Kedl about why wind was an appealing power source for New England country estates in the late nineteenth century and how Eustis, a mechanical engineer, came to install a customized windmill on his own property. Watch our interview to learn more.

Read about research conducted at the Study Center in 2023-2024 in the summer issue of Historic New England magazine and keep an eye out for an article about the Eustis Estate’s turbine in our Spring 2025 issue.