Huntington History

On Woodbury Road, about a half mile south of Main Street, Huntington sits a brick commercial building in the middle of a residential neighborhood. For decades, half of the first floor has been home to a delicatessen, while the other half has been dedicated to personal grooming businesses—previously a beauty parlor, currently a nail salon. The upper level has seen a variety of businesses. How did this commercial building end up in a residential neighborhood?
Ben Tasman, one of the first glaziers in the Town of Huntington, acquired the almost half acre property in 1928. By the following year, he apparently started to construct a building on the site—a notice in The Long-Islander that year advises that Tasman had topsoil available for removal from a site across the street from the Woodbury Avenue School.  The building is built into the side of a hill across from the site of the old schoolhouse.  This early construction date explains why a commercial building sits in an area zoned residential—Huntington didn’t enact a zoning ordinance until 1934. However, it seems the building was not finished before the onset of the Great Depression.
The not-yet-completed building drew the attention of one of Huntington’s wealthy summer residents.  In 1935, during the depths of the Great Depression, Marshall Field, whose estate on Lloyd Neck is now Caumsett State Historic Park, wanted to help alleviate unemployment in town and show that a small town like Huntington could support manufacturing enterprises. He established the United States Leather Goods Company, Inc. with John Clark, the superintendent of Caumsett, as the company’s president. The manufacture of leather luggage was chosen because it was a labor-intensive business and would not compete with any existing businesses in Huntington. The company expected to employ 50 or 60 hands initially. The company leased Tasman’s building and would begin operations “as soon as it is completed.” Perhaps Tasman started construction in 1929 and stopped with the onset of the Depression, but was able to complete the building with the promise of a new tenant.
The company manufactured high-grade luggage for department stores across the country and was soon known as Suffolk Leather Goods Company and later as Suffolk Craftsman, Inc. Field hired Samuel Balterman, who was later described as “one of the best leather manufacturing men of the East,” to serve as general manager of the venture. Six years later, Balterman purchased the company from its organizers. Despite the earlier predictions of increased employment, by 1941 the company had only 20 employees.
The building was almost entirely destroyed by fire in December 1950 with damage estimated at $40,000 to $60,000. It took firefighters five and a half hours to extinguish the blaze, which they attacked from all sides as well as from an aerial ladder truck. All that was left were the four walls and the roof. Mr. Tasman said he would rebuild. But the fire appears to have been the end of the leather goods factory. At the time of the fire, the building was also home to a printing concern known as Pheasant Press, and was used for storage by the owner of Peggy’s Outlet store on Elm Street in Huntington village.
Three years after that devastating fire, M&D Coat Company moved into the building because there had been a fire at its previous location on Railroad Avenue in Huntington Station. M&D made coats on the premises and sold at factory prices, or as they advertised in 1958 “A little out of the way; less to pay.”
According to Building Department records, in 1958, the roof on the building was re-shingled, the rotted cornices replaced and the building was painted. Around the same time, a deli was opened on the north side of the first floor; while the south side was home to a hairdresser.
The executors of Tasman’s estate sold the property in 1984 to Henry Birli, Paul Birli and Michael Macchiarella, who sold appliances from the second floor of the building under the name Three D T.V. & Appliance Co., Inc. The current owner acquired the property in 2000 and the upper floor is now the production studio of a shop that sells monogrammed gifts.