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long island history

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Photo from Middle Country Public Library

Amongst the Middle Country Public Library’s many historical artifacts are a few that explain just how far the area has come from its pastoral roots. The picture and story below comes courtesy of a collaborative effort among the librarian staff.

Selden schoolchildren sang “America” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the ceremony on Nov. 9, 1935, when the cornerstone was laid for the soon-to-be-built new Selden School. 

Photo from Middle Country Library

Sealed within the cornerstone was a copper box containing three local newspapers of the day (the Patchogue Advance, the Argus and the Mid-Island Mail), the year’s school census, a copy of the day’s program, a 1935-minted dime and penny, and an 1885 almanac. 

The new Selden Elementary school was completed in 1936 and replaced the one-room schoolhouse which had served the community from 1898 on. The updated structure contained three classrooms, a principal’s office, a well house, indoor washrooms and an oil-burning heating system. 

Further renovations to the building were undertaken in 1948, which ultimately accommodated almost 50 years of students within its walls. 

The U.S. Army surplus cannon depicted here was purchased after WWII with nickels and dimes saved by the schoolchildren of Selden. 

You’ll see it in front of the building if you drive by 575 Middle Country Road, where Middle Country Public Library Selden stands today.  

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The Dyett Sand-Lime Brick Factory is shown along the west shore of Port Jefferson Harbor at the former site of California Grove and Pavilion. Above photo by Arthur S. Greene; Photo from Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

The Port Jefferson Post Office Building, now the Regency condominiums at 202 Main Street, was unlike any other structure in the village’s downtown.

The Dyett Sand-Lime Brick Factory is shown along the west shore of Port Jefferson Harbor at the former site of California Grove and Pavilion. Above photo by Arthur S. Greene; Photo from Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

Completed in 1911 and remodeled over the years, the former Post Office Building was constructed of sand-lime brick, rather than common clay brick.

Prized for its natural white color, strength and durability, the attractive sand-lime brick was manufactured nearby at the Dyett Sand-Lime Brick Company.

The corporation was named for its founder, James H. Dyett (1864-1944), who served as the firm’s general manager and had invented a machine for pressing bricks.

In 1908, the company purchased acreage in Bay View Park on the west side of Port Jefferson Harbor and started building its factory.

Located at the former site of California Grove and Pavilion at the foot of Washington Street in today’s Poquott, the property was considered ideal for Dyett’s operations.

To make a sand-lime brick, a mixture of silica sand and hydrated lime is moistened, molded into the desired shape and cured under high pressure steam.

The abundant deposits of the superior quality sand found in and about Port Jefferson provided Dyett with a near inexhaustible supply of the main raw material needed at its plant. In addition, the company’s factory was located directly on Port Jefferson Harbor, enabling Dyett to ship its heavy pallets of brick by barge to waiting markets, easily and cheaply.

Despite this rosy picture, the corporation became embroiled in a fight with Brookhaven Town, which sought to dispossess an intrusive Dyett from unlawfully operating on a portion of the beach fronting the company’s property.

In 1912, the Supreme Court, Suffolk County Special Term, affirmed Brookhaven Town’s title to the land in dispute. The corporation considered its options, but an appeal was never pursued so the decision of the court stood.

The Port Jefferson Post Office Building, now the Regency condominiums, is pictured at 202 Main Street. The building was constructed of attractive sand-lime brick, prized for its natural white color, strength and durability. Photo by Arthur S. Greene; Photo from Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

Dyett’s honeymoon on the harbor over, the brick company was sold in 1914 to John A. Gibson of Far Rockaway, New York. The following year, Dyett opened a sand-lime plant in New Orleans, Louisiana.

During World War I, the former Dyett complex was taken over by O’Connor-Bennett and the Union Ship and Dock Company, which built four wooden coal barges for the United States Navy before moving the yard’s operations to Flushing, New York. 

Beginning in 1921, scows were moored and maintained at the old Dyett dock, which had been leased by the Great Eastern Gravel Corporation.

Alarmed by the growing industrialization of their community, the residents of Bay View Park formed an association in 1927 and voted to buy what was once the site of Dyett’s sand-lime brick factory, thus “forestalling the further encroachment of commercial interests.” The property was later purchased by the Incorporated Village of Poquott and is known today as “California Park.”

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Runners tackle the lung-bursting grade on Port Jefferson’s Main Street during the Cross-Island Marathon. Photo from the Swenk Collection

The Cross-Island Marathon was a former Port Jefferson to Patchogue road race. Attracting a record 1,175 runners in 1979, the annual event originated a decade earlier with a field of only 18 competitors.

In 1969, the Patchogue Jaycees and the Cavalier Athletic Club co-sponsored a “Marathon Run” from Broadway Avenue in Holbrook to the ferry dock at the Patchogue Sandspit. Not a true marathon of 26 miles and 385 yards, the June 21 race was to cover slightly over seven miles but was shortened to a 5.5-mile event to avoid major thoroughfares.

The co-sponsors extended the 1970 “Marathon Run” to 14 miles, starting the June 20 race at Nesconset Highway (Route 347) in Port Jefferson Station and finishing at the Rider Avenue entrance to Shorefront Park in Patchogue.

The 14-mile distance remained the same in June 1971 and 1972, but the race was renamed the “Cross-Island Marathon.” In addition, the Village of Patchogue’s Recreation and Parks Department joined in sponsoring the event, later becoming the key organizer of the run.

In June 1973 and 1974, the marathon’s course was stretched to 15.5 miles. The race still finished at Shorefront Park in Patchogue but began near the waterfront at the intersection of Broadway and Main in lower Port Jefferson. With this change, the run lived up to its name, became a true “Cross-Island” event, increased in popularity and drew more competitors.

Sandra Swenk was Port Jefferson’s mayor when the marathon was brought to the village’s downtown. As she fired the starter pistol signaling the beginning of the race, the runners charged up Port Jefferson’s Main Street passing a number of businesses that have been lost to the passage of time — the Elk Hotel and Restaurant, Grammas Sweets, Woodfield’s Men’s Wear, Cooper’s Office Supplies, Mac Snyder’s Army and Navy Store, Gristedes Supermarket, Cappy’s Carpets, Ringen’s Luncheonette and many more. 

Runners set out from Port Jefferson’s Main Street at the start of the marathon. Photo from the Swenk Collection

Seasoned runners easily handled the climb from the village’s waterfront up the hill to the LIRR crossing where the course finally leveled off, but the lung-bursting grade often proved quite challenging for first-timers unfamiliar with the terrain.

Over the years, the run’s start in Port Jefferson and end in Patchogue was a constant, but the length of the race was not: 15.6 miles, 1975-1977; 20.8 miles, 1978; 19.6 miles, 1979; and 20 miles, 1980.

In 1981, the Cross-Island Marathon was scrapped and replaced with the 13.1-mile Patchogue Half Marathon, prompted in part by a desire among some in greater Patchogue to have a strictly South Shore event and growing concerns about the race’s impact on road traffic.

Although the Cross-Island Marathon underwent frequent changes throughout its history, one outstanding athlete dominated the run despite the disruptions. From 1969-1980, Justin Gubbins won each race, often with blistering times, except for 1972 when he was away for Olympic Trials and in 1977 when he ran second to Louis Calvano.

Local residents also performed well in the Cross-Island Marathon. Steve Heinbockel of Belle Terre placed third in 1976 and 1977. His father, William, a math teacher zat Port Jefferson High School, won the age 41-50 division in 1978, a year with 924 finishers.

Among Long Island’s original road races, the bygone Cross Island Marathon was a unique run, linking Port Jefferson Harbor on the North Shore with Patchogue Bay on the South.

Kenneth Brady has served as the Port Jefferson Village Historian and president of the Port Jefferson Conservancy, as well as on the boards of the Suffolk County Historical Society, Greater Port Jefferson Arts Council and Port Jefferson Historical Society. He is a longtime resident of Port Jefferson.

Amongst the Middle Country Public Library’s many historical artifacts are a few that explain just how far the area has come from its pastoral roots. The picture and story below a courtesy of a collaborative effort among the librarian staff. 

Baseball is considered America’s pastime, and no more so than in our own backyards. 

A search of local newspapers shows that baseball was played throughout Long Island at least as early as the 1930s. 

Most town fire departments, the Police Athletic League and many local businesses formed teams for fun and friendly competition. The news from the time was filled with the results of these games. 

A June 1, 1934 article in the Suffolk County News noted that the team representing Centereach Fire Department played a home game against Sayville on Decoration Day (now known as Memorial Day), losing a double-header. 

Major support for these games was frequently provided by fundraisers like the dance held on the evening of April 21, 1951 by Centereach’s Tordik-Diederich-Duffield VFW Post 4927. Over 200 people attended to support the backstop fund.

Beyond organized games, popup games would arise. A chance encounter between the team from Centereach and a group of U.S. soldiers who were stationed here for the day was held on the grounds behind Carl’s Tavern. 

The July 26, 1939 edition of The Mid-Island Mail reported that the soldiers defeated Centereach, 6-2.

Carl’s Tavern was located on Middle Country Road in Centereach. In 1939 it was purchased and renamed the Mid Island Tavern, known to locals as the MIT well into the 1908s. It was owned and operated by the Boyle family for over four decades.

In 1940, the Centereach team got off to a great start by defeating Coram 13-1. 

The team consisted of catcher, Lou Corey; first baseman, Bernard Williams; second baseman, Walt Presner; third baseman, Tony Bush; shortstop, Lou Coucinello; leftfielder, Larry Martin; centerfielder, Lou Stohr; rightfielder, Andy Schmidt and Arthur Dhuy. 

The team’s manager was Centereach resident, Arthur Murray, who served as Brookhaven Town Highway Superintendent and the purchasing agent for WPA construction materials. 

The date of this picture and the team name are unknown, but it most likely depicts the Centereach Fire Department Team. 

Do you recognize any of the team members? 

If you can identify any of these players, please reach out to the local history team at Middle Country Public Library at [email protected]. 

We would love to be able to fill in the blanks!

This article was updated on April 7 to correct misinformation

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This photo by John M. Brown shows what is now the village’s East Main Street and captures the Port Jefferson Hotel on the left. The view is toward the Baptist Church and the intersection with Prospect Street. Photo from the Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

By Kenneth Brady

Two boys are shown sitting on a dock. The west shore of Port Jefferson Harbor is pictured in the background. Photo by John M. Brown. Photo from the Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

Amateur photographer John M. Brown recorded life in Port Jefferson, his images conveying what it looked like and felt like to live in the village at the beginning of the 20th century.

Simple cameras, then for sale in Port Jefferson, had democratized photography, once largely the realm of professionals, enabling Brown and other laymen to take pictures of their surroundings.

Brown’s work contributes to our understanding of Port Jefferson’s past, but is unique in offering the unvarnished perspective of a common man, not the stylized view of a commercial photographer.

His straightforward snapshots of the village capture a variety of people, places, objects and events including bathers at the East Beach, Petty’s Confectionery, an American flag and sailboat races, respectively.

Brown’s direct photographs also include views of Port Jefferson’s yacht basin, Methodist Church, post office, ferry Victor, Athena Hall, residents, Parker’s Pond, school, Overton’s Agricultural Implements, and bank, all combining to create a shutterbug’s portrait of the village during the early 1900s.

Opening in 1900, the First National Bank was located on the corner of Main and East Main streets. This image by John M. Brown shows the building without its 1922 addition. Photo from the Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive.

Described in the Port Jefferson Times as “an enthusiastic photographer,” three of Brown’s one-of-a-kind shots of the Aug. 2, 1902 launching of the schooner Martha E. Wallace at the village’s Mather and Wood Shipyard were even made into printed post cards and then sold by local stationers.

Brown was appointed Port Jefferson’s postmaster in 1900 and served in that capacity until 1916. During his tenure, the village’s post office was upgraded to second class and its employees were required to take civil service examinations, a Postal Savings Bank was established, and Parcel Post was introduced. In 1911, the Port Jefferson Post Office opened at its new address, 202 Main Street.

Brown’s house in Port Jefferson, often the subject of his photographs, was moved to 105 Tuthill Street in 1929 from its former location on the northeast corner of Main and Tuthill streets where the New York Telephone Company subsequently built an office on the choice site.

Brown resided at his new address until March 1940, dying there at the age of 86. He was buried in Port Jefferson’s Cedar Hill Cemetery where his wife, Evelyn, had been interred in May 1930.

Kenneth Brady has served as the Port Jefferson Village Historian and president of the Port Jefferson Conservancy, as well as on the boards of the Suffolk County Historical Society, Greater Port Jefferson Arts Council and Port Jefferson Historical Society. He is a longtime resident of Port Jefferson.

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Athena Hall, now Theatre Three, is shown in 1909 on the west side of Port Jefferson’s Main Street. The building has been remodeled extensively during its 133-year history and used for a variety of purposes. Photograph by Waters, photo from Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

By Kenneth Brady

In an 1873 column appearing in the weekly Long Island Leader, the newspaper’s publishers bemoaned that Port Jefferson lacked a suitable public hall for lectures, exhibitions, shows and parties.

Lamenting that the village did not have a meeting place to accommodate a sizeable audience, the Leader called upon an investor to build a “creditable” hall in Port Jefferson for assemblies and performances.While waiting for a public-spirited person to construct a large hall in the village, its residents got together at some of Port Jefferson’s smaller venues.

Typical of these settings, Lee’s Hall occupied the top floor of John S. Lee’s tin shop on what is now Port Jefferson’s East Broadway. Dances, suppers, cake walks and sociable’s were held in the building.

Bayles Hall, located in rooms above the second Bayles Chandlery on today’s East Broadway, was another popular gathering place. During one evening, the audience enjoyed a play based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Though horribly cramped, Henry Hallock’s Hall on Main Street featured vocal groups, magicians and outside speakers.

Athena Hall, now Theatre Three, is shown in 1909 on the west side of Port Jefferson’s Main Street. The building has been remodeled extensively during its 133-year history and used for a variety of purposes. Photograph by Waters, photo from Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

Besides these three halls, other meeting places in Port Jefferson were important to the village’s cultural and social life. Tom Thumb performed at Smith’s Hotel, exhibits were displayed at the local schoolhouse and, in a unique use of the space, concerts were held in John R. Mather’s lumber shed.

Port Jefferson’s houses of worship also hosted a variety of events. Swiss bell ringers played at the Baptist Church, minstrels entertained at the Presbyterian Church and temperance lecturers held forth at the Methodist Church.

Villagers continued to get along without a large hall until 1888 when construction on a spacious meeting house finally began. Fifteen years had passed since the Leader claimed that the demand for a public hall was “growing rapidly” in Port Jefferson. What could explain the delay?

The financial Panic of 1873 and its aftermath brought tight money, sluggish sales and hard times to Port Jefferson, perhaps dampening any enthusiasm for the venture.

The cast of the H.M.S. Pinafore is pictured in 1897 on the stage at Port Jefferson’s Athena Hall. Photograph by Arthur S. Greene, photo from Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive

As the economy improved, there was renewed interest in the project. L. Beecher Homan, publisher of the Port Jefferson Times, grocer D. Oliver Petty, who’s building also housed the Times, and insurance agent Albert T. Norton were among the investors who financed the hall’s construction. 

Their timing could not have been better. During the 1880s, Port Jefferson began transitioning from a shipbuilding center to a vacationland. With the influx of tourists, businessmen could turn a profit in entertaining visitors on top of the money to be made in satisfying the needs of villagers.

The New Hall, later named Athena Hall, was located on the west side of Main Street and opened on Thursday evening, Sept. 20, 1888, following a parade. The night’s playbill featured local talent.

The public entered the New Hall using a broad staircase leading up to a wide veranda. The frame building, which purportedly could seat 1,000 people, had two levels.

The upper floor included the main hall, a U-shaped balcony, the stage, a space for the orchestra, dressing and property rooms and a committee room. The lower floor contained a coal room and a hot air furnace, pantry, dining room and lower hall.

Remodeled extensively throughout its storied history, what was once Athena Hall has been used as a playhouse, graduation site, movie theater, community center, polling place, machine shop, steam laundry, roller skating rink, radio and television sales store, dance hall and cabaret.

Known today as Theatre Three, the 133-year-old building is a Port Jefferson treasure.

Kenneth Brady has served as the Port Jefferson Village Historian and president of the Port Jefferson Conservancy, as well as on the boards of the Suffolk County Historical Society, Greater Port Jefferson Arts Council and Port Jefferson Historical Society. He is a longtime resident of Port Jefferson.

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Courtesy of Middle Country Library

Amongst the Middle Country Public Library’s many historical artifacts are a few that explain just how far the area has come from its pastoral roots. The pictureS and story below comes courtesy of a collaborative effort among the librarian staff.

Courtesy of Middle Country Library

Clarence “Cad” Dare, pictured here at his post atop the 70-foot Bald Hill Fire Tower, directed forest fire management in the woodlands of Suffolk County and the town of Oyster Bay as Fire Ranger for over 32 years.

A lifelong Selden resident, Dare also served as Brookhaven Town Highway Superintendent during the years 1915 through 1920, before accepting the District Forest Ranger position. 

A colorful firefighter, Dare directed every major forest fire in both counties. To detect and locate fires, Dare and associate fire rangers scanned the region through a powerful telescope mounted on a compass base. A telephone on the lookout platform allowed the observer to call any fire in to the nearest Fire War-den.

Courtesy of Middle Country Library

In April 1952, at age 70, Dare was credited with working for over two days straight, extinguishing a forest fire that burned from Holtsville all the way to Selden, requiring the use of 90% of Brookhaven’s fire appa-ratus to subdue it. As the Patchogue Advance reported on Dec. 4, 1952,  Dare was “eating smoke with men half his age keeping at his fingertips a knowledge of what was going on over hundreds of acres of burning trees and scrubs.” 

The value of service to country and community was held in high regard in the Dare family. His father Samuel, a native of Selden, served in Company C, 165th Volunteer Infantry of the Union forces in the Civil War, and before his death, in 1913, he was a town trustee of the Town of Brookhaven.  

Following in his father’s footsteps, Clarence Dare was active in community affairs, serving as vice presi-dent and director of the National Bank of Lake Ronkonkoma, and also as a treasurer and trustee of the Board of Education for the School District of Selden. 

During World War I, he was a member of the New York State National Guard. Additionally, Dare belonged to various fraternal organizations, including the Suwasset Chapter of Royal Arch Masons in Patchogue, the Patchogue Commandery of the Knights Templar and the Kismet Temple Shrine of Brooklyn. 

Dare passed away at the age of 70 in 1952 and is buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery in Patchogue with his wife, Florence Eugenia Gould, daughter of George E. and Eugenia (Hallock) Gould, both natives of Lake Grove.