The Conference House Association operates the Conference House, a stone house on the southern tip of Staten Island built by Captain Christopher Billopp before 1680, making it one of the oldest surviving structures in New York City. The house is best known as the site of a three-hour meeting on September 11, 1776, in which Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge met with British commander Lord Howe in a failed attempt to negotiate an end to the Revolutionary War. After decades of disuse, the city acquired the building in 1926, the Conference House Association formed to restore it, and restoration was completed in 1937; the house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. Today the Association operates it as a house museum in Tottenville's Conference House Park.