Huntington History

Like any typical colonial town, Huntington has a village green; and unlike many its village green survives intact more than three and a half centuries after it was first laid out.  But Huntington also boasts a twentieth century village green.

This second village green is on land that didn’t even exist when Europeans first settled Huntington in the mid-seventeenth century.  It was built on landfill in Cold Spring Harbor in 1930.  Prior to that date, the area north of Main Street and west of Shore Road was mostly mud flats.  Two buildings hugged close to the adjoining roads, the Cold Spring Harbor Library built facing the corner of Main Street and Shore Road in 1913 and the Cold Spring Harbor firehouse built facing Main Street in 1906.

As early as 1882, there were plans to create a park here.  But most of the underwater land had been leased by the Huntington Board of Trustees to private individuals as well as the library and the fire district.  It wasn’t until 1929 that wealthy residents of the area, working through the Cold Spring Harbor Village Improvement Society, managed to convince the Board of Trustees to secure a surrender of those leases.  Those that were not surrendered were subleased to the Village Improvement Society.

The new park was dedicated on July 4, 1931.  The privately built park was under the jurisdiction of the Village Improvement Society.  During the course of construction, the 1906 firehouse was moved across the harbor by barge for use by the Cold Spring Harbor Biological Labs for housing.  A new brick firehouse, still in use today, was built across the street.

The park included a large boulder to which was affixed a plaque in memory of the whaling voyages sponsored by the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Company.  That boulder now sits in front of the Whaling Museum.  The new park was designated as Cold Spring Harbor’s “Village Green,” something the area did not have historically.  The name continued to be used in local papers as late as 1964.  But the more common name, used as early as 1937, came from the park’s proximity to the village library.  The area was known unofficially for many years as Library Park.

After the library moved to a new location in 1986, the old name didn’t make sense.  But it wasn’t until later that the park was given an official name.  It was first officially designated as “Paper Mill Park” in recognition of the paper mill established in 1782 by Richard Conklin near the site of the old library building.  But more recently, the official designation has been changed to Firemen’s Park in recognition of the fact that from 1906 to 1930 the Cold Spring Harbor firehouse stood along the Main Street side of the Park and the park is now maintained by the fire department.