Huntington History

Roads in Huntington today are mostly paved in asphalt.  There are a few concrete roads—especially in Northport—and maybe even a dirt road or two.  But a hundred years ago, Huntington’s Main Street was a wood road.

In 1911, the Town Board decided to pave Main Street with wood blocks.  At the time the road was basically a dirt road with a covering of Peekskill gravel.  It tended to get muddy in wet weather and dusty in dry weather.  For many years around the turn of the twentieth century, Samuel Shadbolt would ride up and down Main Street in a wagon equipped with a water tank in an effort to keep the dust down during the summer months.  In 1907, George Taylor circulated a petition asking that oil be used instead of water because it would last longer.  Those who favored water circulated their own petition.  They say oil and water don’t mix, but that didn’t keep several storeowners from signing both petitions.

The decision was made to use oil.  But oiling the dirt road was not good enough.  For one thing, it did nothing about the mud after a rainstorm.  For another thing, the advent of automobiles took their toll.  In 1907, The Long-Islander predicted that with the arrival of William K. Vanderbilt’s Long Island Motor Parkway, Huntington would became “an Arcadia for Autoists.”  One Sunday afternoon that summer, Mrs. Thomas Aitken counted 250 automobiles pass along Main Street in just three hours.

Four years after the oil was introduced to Huntington’s streets, the Town Board decided it was time for a more permanent solution.  This time salvation from mud and dust came in the form of wood

blocks measuring 8” x 3” and 3” deep (the block pictured here measures 7¾” x 2¾’”and 2½“ deep).  The work began in September 1911.  The blocks were laid on a concrete foundation from New York Avenue to Green Street (the wood paving was extended to Prospect Street two years later).   Private companies wishing to lay water, electric, telephone, or gas lines were warned to do their work before the wood blocks were laid because they would not be allowed to dig up the blocks once they had been installed.

There was some discussion as to the effect the new surface would have on the annual bobsled races down Cold Spring Hill into the village.  Would sleds go faster and further; or slower and less far?  The blocks also inspired a weekly newspaper column, “Along the Wood Blocks.”  The column was inaugurated soon after the blocks were laid and ran for five years.  The witty observations exposing the foibles, idiosyncrasies, and charm of the local population and extolling the beauty of their town were signed, appropriately enough, with the name  “Creosote.”  The writer was, in fact, Harry R. Fleet, a Huntingtonian who had enjoyed a long career in newspapers.

The wood blocks lasted until 1927.  Despite the warning to the utility companies, over the course of a decade and a half, so many holes were dug into the blocks—and improperly filled—that it was almost impossible to keep the street in decent shape.  Out with the wood blocks, in with concrete.

Blocks were salvaged by local residents.  Some were burned to heat houses.  The one pictured here—along with a few thousand others—was used to pave the new cow barn at the Park Avenue Dairy.