Beginning in 1939 with the creation of his Stony Brook Community Fund, Melville used his wealth to begin the transformation of part of the hamlet into his idea of an idyllic New England village, the Stony Brook Village Center, with white clapboard buildings and quaint stores. The focus had been in the previous center of the village's commerce, which now consists of a village green and a crescent of stores embellished with stone walkways and seasonal gardening. To accomplish this, Melville moved many of the existing shops in the plot into the crescent and modified their details for consistency, a design model similar to that of Colonial Williamsburg.