After federal recognition of George Washington’s birthday was moved to the third Monday in February, the holiday became popularly known as Presidents’ Day and honors all the nation’s chief executives. Of the 44 men who have held the office so far (Grover Cleveland is counted twice since he served two non-consecutive terms), how many have visited the Town of Huntington? Local historians are quick to answer that only two sitting presidents have come to our town. If one removes the qualifier “sitting” and includes pre- and post- presidential visits, the number is higher.
The first president to visit Huntington was the first president. The capital of the new United States was in New York when George Washington was president. On April 20, 1790, Washington crossed from Manhattan to Brooklyn to begin a tour of Long Island. It is thought that the purpose of the tour was to thank the citizens of the Island who helped the patriot cause during the Revolution, especially those who helped by spying on the occupying British army. After traveling along the South Shore, Washington turned north to Setauket and spent the night there at the house of Captain Roe.
At 8:00 on the morning of Friday, April 23, the party set out for the “small village” of Huntington with a stop in Smithtown to water the horses. In Huntington, the president and his party dined at the Widow Platt’s Tavern on Park Avenue, just south of what is now known as East Main Street. Washington described Widow Platt’s as “tolerably good.” Although Washington did not make a record of it in his diary, it is believed that he addressed a large crowd outside Widow Platt’s, perhaps even a majority of the Town’s 2,000 or so inhabitants at the time. He is also thought to have toured the Old Burying Ground, which at end of the war seven years earlier had been the site of a British fort.
Platt’s Tavern after it had been moved to Halesite about 60 years after Washington’s lunch. The building was demolished around 1917.
As he left the Town of Huntington, crossing the meadow at the head of Cold Spring Harbor, he observed workmen building a one room schoolhouse for the community. Legend has it that he helped raise a rafter on the new schoolhouse or that he left a silver dollar for the workers. That schoolhouse would continue to serve the community until 1896. The Bungtown School, as it was known, continues as West Side School in its third building as part of the Cold Spring Harbor School District.
The most frequent presidential visitor to Huntington was probably Theodore Roosevelt, which makes sense since he lived right next door in Oyster Bay. His most famous visit to Huntington was on July 4, 1903 when he came to help celebrate the Town’s 250th anniversary. However, Roosevelt would have been a frequent visitor to Huntington. He visited his friend Henry L. Stimson at Stimson’s estate in West Hills. Roosevelt was also known to row from Sagamore Hill to Lloyd’s Neck and picnic under the Big Oak. It is also reported that he would visit the men of Squadron C at their farm on Cold Spring Hill (see Squadron C: A Summer Home for Brooklyn Horses, posted on this site in July 2013).
President Theodore Roosevelt addresses his Huntington neighbors, including the women in white who were the founders of the Huntington Historical Society.
Ulysses S. Grant may also be considered to have visited Huntington when he was president. The place where he went had been part of Huntington, but was no longer part of Huntington when he visited. In 1875, Grant’s brother-in-law, James F. Casey (the men’s wives were sisters), purchased the Jacob Conklin Farm in what was then known as West Deer Park. Today, the area is known as Wyandanch. President Grant visited Casey’s farm on September 1, 1875. He “expressed himself as highly pleased with the farm of his friend and its picturesque surroundings, and pledged himself to visit Babylon soon again.” According to later press reports, President Grant visited the Casey farm “once or twice.”[1] The lack of contemporaneous reports is puzzling. The visits may not count as visits to Huntington because the farm sat just south of the new town border established on January 1, 1873 when the Town of Babylon split off from the Town of Huntington.
In the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, several presidents visited Huntington either before or after their time in office.
As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the principal speaker at an election rally held in Huntington a week before election day in 1916. Following a parade through Huntington village, local Democrats gathered at the Bijou Theater on Wall Street to hear Roosevelt speak about the accomplishments of the previous four years, the state of the Navy, and the need to elect the entire Democratic slate in the upcoming election.[2]
FDR returned to Huntington in 1931 as Governor of the State. He spoke at Old First Church in an event organized by the local masonic lodge to celebrate of Constitution Day (see Happy Constitution Day, posted on this site in September 2013). Roosevelt, who arrived two and a half hours late by car with a motorcycle escort from New York City (he joked that the name should be changed to Longer Island), spoke on the adoption of the Constitution. His great, great grandfather was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.[3]
A detailed account of Governor Roosevelt’s visit can be found at http://www.jephtha.com/discover/jephtha-lodge-history/franklin-d-roosevelt-visits-jephtha-lodge-in-huntington/
Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt (second from left) at Old First Church with Masons John Boyle, Charles H. Johnson, and Guernsey T. Cross.
Two years after securing victory in Europe, General of the Army and Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower came to Huntington to help celebrate Henry L. Stimson’s 80th birthday. Stimson, who had served in every presidential administration from Theodore Roosevelt’s to Harry Truman’s (with the exception of Warren Harding’s) had been Secretary of War during World War II. He had also had an estate in West Hills since 1903. The future president was joined by Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and 16 other top-ranking current of former government officials in wishing Stimson a happy birthday.[4]
In 1960, back when presidential candidates campaigned on Long Island, both major party candidates were met with large, enthusiastic crowds at the Long Island Arena in Commack. While the arena was not in Huntington, it was only half a mile over the town line. Richard Nixon’s Commack rally was held in late September. He capped off a whirlwind day of campaigning in a rally attended by 8,000 people inside the arena and another 3,000 outside.[5] John F. Kennedy appeared at the arena the Sunday before the election.[6] Although Kennedy received as warm and enthusiastic a reception as Nixon had, on Election Day, he received 17,000 fewer votes than Nixon in the Town of Huntington (and 52,000 fewer votes in Suffolk County).[7]
Although the candidate did not technically appear in Huntington, John F. Kennedy’s mother visited with 300 women during the 1960 campaign at the home of Mr. & Mrs. Nicholas LaCarrubba on Laurel Hill Road in Northport in September 1960.[8]
Jimmy Carter made Huntington the first stop on his national book tour for Living Faith in 1996. Four thousand people waited in a line that stretched for blocks to hear the former president speak and sign books at Book ReVue.[9] Carter had previously visited Huntington when he was a little-known candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in February 1976. Robert Mrazek, then a Suffolk County Legislator and later a Congressman, hosted a reception for Carter at his home in Centerport.[10]
Bill Clinton visited Huntington as a best-selling author. In August 2004, he signed copies of his memoir, My Life, for hundreds of admirers at Book ReVue. He returned to Book ReVue, three years later to promote his book Giving.[11] But Clinton had been to Huntington many years earlier. As a college student in the 1960s, Clinton would come to Huntington to spend Thanksgiving with his college roommate, Tom Campbell, who lived on Lloyd’s Neck.[12] Clinton also was in Huntington in 2010 when he officiated at the wedding of Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin and congressman Anthony Weiner at OHEKA.[13]
Finally, Donald Trump also signed books at Book ReVue during his 1997 book tour for Trump: The Art of the Comeback. In addition, Trump has been known to have visited OHEKA.[14] In 2016, Trump was rumored to be interested in developing condominiums at OHEKA, but he was in the midst of campaigning for the presidency, so that was one deal that never got made.[15]
[1] South Side Signal, September 4, 1875 (thanks to Babylon Historian Mary Cascone for the citation); Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 26, 1902, page 9
[2] The Long-Islander, November 3, 1916, page 3.
[3] The Long-Islander, September 18, 1931, page 1
[4] Henry L. Stimson, The First Wise Man, by David F. Schmitz (Scholarly Resources Inc., Wilmington, DE 2001), page xiii.
[5] Newsday, September 29, 1960, page 1.
[6] Newsday, November 7, 1960, page 3.
[7] The Long-Islander, November 10, 1960, page 1 and 2.
[8] The Long-Islander, September 15, 1960, page 1; and September 29, 1960, page 2.
[9] The Long-Islander, November 21, 1996.
[10] The Long-Islander, February 12, 1976, page 5.
[11] The Long-Islander, November 29, 2007, page 1.
[12] The Long-Islander, November 8, 2012, page 2.
[13] New York Times, July 9, 2010
[14] EHEKA Castle, by Joan Cergol and Ellen Schaffer (Arcadia Publishing 2012), page 95.
[15] Newsday, September 9, 2016.
Huntington History 
Great piece, Robert!