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Archive for the ‘Cold Spring Harbor’ Category

Photograph Reveals Hidden Past

Posted in Cold Spring Harbor, Historic Houses on March 22, 2020| 1 Comment »

A picture is worth a thousand words. A historic picture can be worth so much more*, especially when it helps to illuminate a long forgotten bit of history.

When new owners moved into the house at 63 Turkey Lane in Cold Spring Harbor, they were given a century old photograph showing the house as a hotel, an intriguing clue to their new home’s past. Along with the photograph came stories of ghosts, a brothel, and an Indian burial ground. But the only tangible clues to the home’s past were the photograph and a cache of old liquor bottles found buried in the backyard during a landscaping project.

The Hotel Ivy in its heyday

But for the existence of the photograph, the following history may never have been discovered.

The story starts with Thomas Cass, a blacksmith. Cass and his wife Mary purchased land on the east side of Turkey Lane in three transactions in 1889, 1900 and 1904. Mr. Cass had a carriage factory on the property and the family lived nearby. His wife Mary died in 1904.

Tragedy stuck again a few months later when at 3:30 in the morning on January 26, 1905, in the middle of a snowy, windy night, Cass smelled smoke coming from one of the rooms of his house. He alerted his family and ran through the snow to the fire chief’s house a quarter of a mile away. By the time the fire fighters arrived, the fire was beyond control. They managed to save the barn and the wheelwright shop.

Cass built a new house on the site of his destroyed home. This is the house at 55 Turkey Lane. He also built a second house to rent to New Yorkers for the summer. This is the house at 63 Turkey Lane. He finished the rental house first. By July 1906, James Van Hook, who had recently joined the staff of the fish hatchery and helped with the lobster hatchery at Eagle Dock, was renting the house.

A month later, an auction to sell two pieces of real estate belonging to Cass along with household effects, horse, wagons, and tools was announced. Coincidentally, the same notice reported that Charles Seizer, the proprietor of a hotel in Woodbury was selling his property at auction. Mr. Seizer then purchased Cass’ rental property in early 1908 and announced the opening of the Hotel Ivy: “A First Class Place, as fine as will be found anywhere.” The hotel opened on May 14, 1908.

Mat 29, 1908 advertisement in The Long-Islander

Following the 1908 summer season, Seizer had a new well driven on his property and announced that he would build an extension to the hotel and have a concert hall attached. The next winter, however, Seizer ran afoul of the law.

In a law and order crack down, Seizer was arrested for selling liquor after midnight on a Saturday. The local constables had heard a rumor about a fight to be held at Seizer’s hotel one night in February 1909. They went to the hotel in case there was any trouble. The fighters never appeared. The constables went into the barroom of the hotel at 12:28 a.m. and ordered drinks, which were provided—in violation of the excise law. Seizer was arrested, locked up for the night and taken before Justice of the Peace Valentine Monday morning. At a trial the next Wednesday, Seizer was found guilty and Seizer was held on $1,000 bail to ensure his appearance before the next Grand Jury in Riverhead. Unfortunately for him, Seizer didn’t have $1,000. He ended up spending five weeks in the Riverhead jail, until friends from Brooklyn finally posted his bond on April 5.

It was said that if he left town, the charges against him would be dropped. At the same time, it was reported that a deputy sheriff from the city seized the furniture in the hotel and shipped it to the city. Seizer denied that he was told to leave town. Moreover, he said that he would reopen the hotel for the 1909 summer season, even though his furniture had been taken. However, it seems the Hotel Ivy was no more and that Seizer returned to Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cass was having financial difficulties. He had defaulted on a mortgage loan given by John Sammis and a judgment of foreclosure and sale was entered against the lot his wife first purchased in 1889. By 1910, he was living on Carley Avenue in Huntington. By 1917, all of Thomas Cass’ property on Turkey Lane was owned by Northport-based real estate investor William B. Codling.

After its brief period as a hotel, the house at 63 Turkey Lane seems to have led an uneventful life as a private residence. The Cass house at 55 Turkey Lane was purchased by Donald Lewis in the 1940s and was then owned by his stepson Charles Coon until it was purchased by the current owners in 1990. The house was in very poor condition. The floors needed to be leveled and the rotted wood foundation in the kitchen needed to be replaced.   The new owners also took down interior walls and a chimney and relocated the front door to create a bigger living room. They found numerous pottery shards in the backyard, which seemed to indicate that the property once contained a pottery, but research hasn’t confirmed such a use.

The old barn, located between the two houses, however, has had a more interesting history. It was reportedly used as a barbershop at some point in the last century, but no proof of that use has been found. In the 1960s, it became the studio of artist J. Anthony Buzzelli

Buzzelli was known for his fired enamels on metal as well as paintings in oil and watercolors and wood carvings. The fired enamels were created by fusing mineral compounds onto metal surfaces with heat. Some of his works were designed as architectural murals and were quite large. He showed his art work at the Whitney Museum, the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum as well as locally at the Vera Lazuk Gallery at 117 Main Street in Cold Spring Harbor.

Buzzelli moved to Cold Spring Harbor in 1961 when he married Margaret Scripps McCabe, who was the granddaughter of E.W. Scripps, founder of the Scripps newspaper empire, which now includes broadcasting outlets as well. The couple lived at 58 Goose Hill Road where Buzzelli had a studio. In need of more space, he acquired the old Cass barn at 59 Turkey Lane for a second studio. In May 1969, the Buzzelli’s held a “Moving-to-Florida” Art Sale at their Goose Hill Road home. And at the same time Margaret Buzzelli announced that she giving the house to the newly formed Kehillath Shalom congregation.

Buzzelli continued to own the property on Turkey Lane. In 1978, an addition was built for an artist studio and storage. The couple who purchased the house in 1984 found the house in a seriously deteriorated state. They had to install new floor joists and later added a wrap around porch and foyer. The current owners remodeled the house, exposing historic wood beams from the home’s days as a barn. In addition to small bottles, they also found rusted tools and hardware that may have been used in Thomas Cass’ carriage factory or perhaps in J. Anthony Buzzelli’s enamel works.

All three houses are cherished by their owners and add to the historic charm of Cold Spring Harbor.

 

 

* In this case the historic photograph was worth 1211 words. 

 

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Cold Spring Harbor

Posted in Cold Spring Harbor, Uncategorized on September 2, 2014| 1 Comment »

I have completed a book on Cold Spring Harbor for Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series.  The book is available at Book Revue and local stores in Cold Spring Harbor as well as online at http://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9781467122245/Cold-Spring-Harbor.  Below is the introduction to the book.

CSH Book

Water is the defining characteristic of this place now called Cold Spring Harbor.   To the indigenous inhabitants it was known as Wawepex, or “at the good little water place.”   The European settlers of the seventeenth century named the area after its abundance of fresh water springs. The word “harbor” was added in 1826 to avoid confusion with the town of the same name on the Hudson River (throughout the nineteenth century, most locals continued to use the two word name). The name reflects the essential role water, both fresh and salt, has played in the area’s history. The fresh water springs provided drinking water. The stream flowing from the south provided power for local mills. The harbor provided an outlet for trade up and down the eastern seaboard and a starting point for whaling voyages to the far side of the globe.

Even the most disinterested resident knows that Cold Spring Harbor was a whaling port. But Cold Spring Harbor’s whaling period was relatively brief, lasting just over a quarter century from 1836 to 1862. There is far more to Cold Spring Harbor than whaling.

Cold Spring Harbor has been inhabited for thousands of years. Unfortunately, other than some arrowheads, tools made from animal bone, hide scrappers, and pottery shards, little evidence of pre-European settlement survives. For that matter much of the early European settlement is also unknown. The community is a hamlet within the Town of Huntington and was the western edge of Huntington’s First Purchase in 1653.

Within ten years of the First Purchase, at least three permanent homes had been established in Cold Spring Harbor: Jonathan Rogers log house on the east side of what is now Harbor Road about a half mile south of the head of the harbor, the Rudyard house on the north side of Main Street just before the intersection with Goose Hill Road, and the Titus house on the east side of Goose Hill Road across from what is now Titus Lane.

As farms became established, the need for a mill to grind grain was recognized. In order to avoid the need to bring their grain to mills in either Huntington or Oyster Bay to be ground, permission was sought to build a gristmill in Cold Spring Harbor. After two unsuccessful attempts by others, John Adams in 1682 built a dam across the Cold Spring River, an impressive name for the small stream that runs north through the valley from the present site of the rail road station to the harbor. On this dam Adams built both a gristmill and sawmill. The gristmill was not successful; the sawmill was.

In 1700, Benjamin Hawxhurst built a woolen mill near the present site of the Fish Hatchery. Later in the early nineteenth century, the Jones family operated two very successful woolen mills. The upper woolen mill was located upstream on the site of the 1682 mills at the southeast end of St. John’s Pond. This mill was for weaving.   The lower mill was located on the southwest side of the harbor near the entrance to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory property. The lower mill was powered by water fed to the site by means of a wooden pipe carried over the road on a trestle from a small pond on the south side of the highway and part way up the hill. The lower mill was used for spinning. Together the two woolen mills produced broadcloth, blankets, and coverlets. Starting in the 1870s, the upper mill was used by George W. Earle as a sawmill and organ factory.

In 1782, Richard Conklin built a paper mill near the intersection of Main Street and Shore Road.

Finally, in 1791, the Hewlett family built a gristmill on the east side of the harbor about a quarter of a mile from the head of the harbor. This mill was powered by water from St. John’s pond that ran through a canal between the road and the harbor. The mill burned down in 1921, but traces of the canal can still be seen today.

Cold Spring Harbor was made a Port of Delivery by an Act of Congress on March 2, 1799. As a Port of Delivery, a Surveyor of Customs was appointed, who had the “power to enroll and license vessels to be employed in the coasting trade and fisheries, and to enter and clear, and grant registers and other usual papers to vessels employed in the whale fisheries.” When Customs Districts were reorganized in 1913, the Cold Spring Harbor office was abolished.

Coastal trading was a thriving activity into the early twentieth century. Small shipyards produced the schooners needed to transport goods not only from Cold Spring Harbor to New York City, but up and down the east coast, to the West Indies and beyond. In the 1840s typical cargo would include rice, sugar, cigars, logwood, mahogany, coffee, palm oil, and ivory. In later years, coal, sand and gravel were typical cargos. An indication of the scope of coastal trading is the fact that in 1883 99 ships were registered from Cold Spring Harbor.

The woolen mills and gristmill were two of the enterprises run by the Jones family. The gristmill came into the Jones family through the marriage of John Jones to Hannah Hewlett. The five sons of John and Elizabeth Jones—especially John H. Jones and Walter Restored Jones—were the leading entrepreneurs in Cold Spring Harbor’s early history. In addition to their mills, they operated a general store near the gristmill, a shipyard on the east side of the harbor, and a barrel factory on the west side of the harbor. The bungs used as stoppers on the barrels gave rise to the name Bungtown. In order to get their various products to market, in 1827, brothers John and Walter R. Jones incorporated the Cold Spring Steam Boat Company, built a dock on the east side of the harbor and later procured the steamboat American Eagle to transport their goods to the New York market.

By the 1830s, foreign competition had undermined the profitability of the woolen business. In 1836, the brothers decided to expand their business ventures to include whaling. At first they personally owned the whaling ships, later they incorporated along with other prominent Cold Spring, Huntington, and Oyster Bay citizens. From 1836 to 1862, nine ships sailed from Cold Spring Harbor on voyages lasting up to two years. Woolens from the local mills, barrels from Bungtown, produce and meat from local farms, and other local products were used to outfit the ships for their months long journeys to as far as Alaska. The venture was successful, but the death of John Hewlett Jones in 1859 and of Walter Restored Jones in 1855 as well as the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859 led to the inevitable demise of Cold Spring Harbor’s small whaling industry.

The economic activity spurred by the whaling ventures was soon replaced by tourism—still a mainstay of the local economy. At the same time, shipyards, a marine salvage yard, sail makers, and blacksmiths continued Cold Spring Harbor’s industrial traditions.

World famous panorama artist John Banvard settled in Cold Spring Harbor in 1852. Banvard made a fortune exhibiting his half mile long painting of the Mississippi River. Audiences would be seated in a specially built auditorium while canvases on either side of the room were advanced from one scroll to another to give the illusion of floating down the river.   After a successful European tour, which included a private viewing for Queen Victoria, he built a castle-like home reportedly inspired by Winsor Castle and named it Glenada in honor of his daughter Ada.

The home was later converted into a luxurious summer resort hotel, which was joined by two others, Forest Lawn next to the Glenada and Laurelton, on the west side of the harbor. Less wealthy visitors could stay at Van Ausdall’s hotel. Day-trippers took steamboats out from New York City by the thousands to visit local picnic groves along the harbor’s shores. Some wealthy New Yorkers built homes of their own overlooking the harbor.

In the decades before the turn of the twentieth century, the old factory buildings on the west side of the harbor were put to new uses. First in 1883, New York State saw the advantages of the area’s fresh water springs to operate a fish hatchery to raise fish to stock local lakes and rivers.  A few years later, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences established a field station on the harbor’s western shore.   That small field station has now grown into one of the leading genetics institutions in the world.

Close proximity to New York City, of course, meant that suburbanization was inevitable. The trend began slowly in the 1920s, but was temporarily halted by the Great Depression of the 1930s. It resumed in full force after World War II. This explosive growth not only in Cold Spring Harbor but throughout the Town of Huntington led directly to the establishment of one of the community’s most distinctive assets today—its school system. Originally four separate local school districts, students who wished to continue with high school, attended Huntington High School until 1958. When that district stopped accepting out of district residents, the local districts banded together and built their own high school, now one of the top rated schools in the country.

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From Steamships to Steamers: A History of Eagle Dock Beach

Posted in Cold Spring Harbor, tagged , , , on July 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Visitors to Cold Spring Harbor’s Community Beach may be hard pressed to imagine the industrial bustle that once characterized the area.  For 175 years, the spit of land now known as Eagle Dock Community Beach was a center of commercial activity.  With the removal of the oil storage facility to the north of the beach, the area is returning to its bucolic past.

The east side of Cold Spring Harbor was known in the nineteenth century as Clamtown because of the abundance of clams found in the local waters.  Oysters were also harvested here.  But it was commercial activity that defined the area.

As early as the 1830s, a steamboat dock was built near the north end of the spit of land known as Middle Beach—now the site of the community beach.  Walter R. Jones and John H. Jones acquired this parcel and the adjoining land to the north from the Huntington Board of Trustees in 1837.    The outline of the dock can be seen on the 1837 Coastal Survey of Long Island.  From this dock, the steamboat American Eagle made three trips a week into New York.  The side-wheel steamboat carried passengers and freight on its regular run and also was used to tow whale ships in and out of the harbor when tides and wind conditions required.  One passenger in 1843 wrote of his trip aboard the American Eagle.  The ship left Cold Spring Harbor at 5:00 on a Monday morning.  There were stops in Oyster Bay, Glen Cove and New Rochelle before reaching Fulton Market pier at 9:30.  During the four and a half hour ride, the passengers enjoyed a hearty breakfast and a very good cup of coffee—“the best cup of coffee that is made in the ‘nine counties’,” according to the correspondent.

The American eagle depicted in a recent painting by artist Bill Jonas.

The American eagle depicted in a recent painting by artist Bill Jonas.

The American Eagle was retired in 1845 and replaced by the Croton.  Seven years later a new dock was built at the southwest corner of Lloyd’s Neck and the Croton used that dock saving passengers 45 minutes.  By 1873, the dock used by the American Eagle was identified on a survey as “Old S.B. Dock.”

But Middle Beach had not been abandoned.  Around 1860, John P. Dole established a ship salvage yard south of the old steamboat dock.  Over the next 25 years, Dole would purchase old wooden boats, some from the U.S. Navy, and salvage what useable material he could.  The most valuable commodity was the metal hardware.  Larger timbers were used to build houses.   After all that could be salvaged was removed, the ship’s carcass was burned.  The spectacular fires drew large crowds along Shore Road.  Reportedly, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s famous yacht, The North Star met its demise at Dole’s Beach.

By the 1870s, Cold Spring Harbor had become a resort community.  Grand hotels—Laurelton, Glenada and Forest Lawn—and smaller boarding houses attracted New Yorker seeking to escape the heat of the city.  What better way to start a vacation than with a steamboat ride?  With that in mind Dr. Oliver Jones decided to rebuild the old steam dock, this time with a causeway across the cove to reach shore road.  At the time, the cove extended as far north as the present day Beach Club property.  Dr. Jones, whose obituary noted he had a hobby of building new roads, planned to extend the road through a ravine and on to Huntington village two miles away.  The road was never completed east of Shore Road.

Dr. Jones used bricks from his yard at West Neck for fill, which explains the plethora of bricks in the area where the dock had been.  The new dock was completed in 1885 and was named “Eagle Dock,” undoubtedly in honor of the first steamboat to ply Cold Spring Harbor’s waters.  On the dock—which was really more of a bulkhead pier—was a freight house.  The steamboat Sylvan Dell made the trip from Eagle Dock to Pier 23 in New York in two hours and fifteen minutes—half the time it took the American Eagle­ forty years earlier.

Image

A few years earlier (1881), Elwood Abrams leased from Charles H. Jones the land north of the dock for use as his shipyard.  He had arrived in Cold Spring Harbor in 1868 and operated a shipyard further south on the harbor.  Abrams eventually added a saw mill.  He lived across Shore Road and there he operated an ice cream, soda, candy and tobacco store as well as a boarding house.

In the 1890s, there seemed to be no end to the activities at Eagle Dock:

William Bingham and Benjamin Brush opened a grocery store near the present site of the crew team’s boathouse in 1890.  Bingham also had an ice house and imported ice from Maine when the local ice crop failed.

A gentleman named Mason converted the old sail loft and ice cream saloon at Eagle Dock into a dance hall in 1891.  Mason’s Eagle Dock Pavilion became a popular social gathering place.

In the late 1890s, T. Wilson Gildersleeve had a bowling alley at Eagle Dock.  But it wasn’t until 1957, when he was 74 years old, that Gildersleeve bowled a perfect game and that was at the Commack bowling alley.

In 1896, the State fish hatchery started a lobster hatchery at Eagle Dock.

When the grand old hotel, the Glenada was dismantled in 1906, the used lumber was shipped from Eagle Dock.

In 1908 when William K. Vanderbilt II invited motorist from Europe and across the country to come to Long Island to race their automobiles on Long Island’s rural highways, steamboats from Connecticut and Westchester brought passengers to Eagle Dock where they were met by stage coaches to take them to see the race from Woodbury turn—the corner of Jericho Turnpike and Woodbury Road.  The next year, Eagle Dock welcomed the steamer Victor, which had been outfitted to take cars across the Sound from Stamford, CT.

During Prohibition, Eagle Dock was reportedly the drop off point for hundreds of cases of illicit liquor from Canada.

Meanwhile, the Abrams shipyard continued to be busy.  Instead of building ships, the yard was now mostly involved with repairing yachts and storing them for the winter.  Abram’s saw mill was considered one of the best and largest on Long Island.

The land on which Eagle Dock and Abrams shipyard were located continued to be owned by the Jones family.  The rest of Middle Beach to the south as well as the land under the cove had been acquired by Henry DeForest in 1879.  DeForest acquired hundreds of acres of uplands reaching from Shore Road to Goose Hill Road.  The last 31 acres of that estate is now being offered for sale.

The DeForest land on Middle Beach had, according the 1952 estate appraisal of the property, “a summer beach house and shacks with no market value.”   DeForest also had a small engine, known as a donkey engine, that would pull his yacht, the 8 meter sailboat Priscilla III, along rails to the beach for winter storage.  Remains of the engine and rails can still be seen.  The house at the north end of the DeForest property on Middle Beach (about where the “pirate” ship is today) was the home of George Shellack, who was the captain on the DeForest boats during the summer and their chauffer during the winter.   There were three other buildings, all on stilts.  The largest, near the donkey engine, was where all the yachting paraphernalia was kept.  A second was home to two young bachelors who helped with the DeForest boats.  The third is where the maids from Johnston DeForest’s house (the white house behind the pond) changed their clothes when they went to swim every afternoon during the summer.   The Dole family had a boathouse on the beach between the three shacks and the Shellack’s cottage.

The Deforests also had a small floating building moored along Shore Road opposite the driveway to their mansion, Wawapeck.  They kept rowboats and canoes in the house, which they used to get out to the spit.

The DeForest family allowed Cold Spring Harbor residents to use their beach for swimming.  The Cold Spring Harbor Civic Association raised money to fund the operation of the beach.  Access was across the road built by Dr. Jones to the old Eagle Dock.

In July 1922, Rosalie Jones, acting as executor for her mothers’ estate, offered several pieces of land, including the Eagle Dock property, for sale.  The parcel was described as being “five acres in all” so it included the shipyard property as well.  Walter Abrams, who had taken over the shipyard from his father, purchased the shipyard property from the Jones family for $50,000 in October 1922.  Just two years later, Abrams sold the land to the Standard Oil Company of New York for $175,000.  Abrams moved his shipyard to Halesite and it is now operated by the Knutson family.  Interestingly, Abrams’ father was appointed an agent of Standard Oil in 1900 for the sale of naptha, a petroleum product used as a solvent and sometimes for fuel.

Local legend has it that the oil tanks were the result of the failure of the newly formed Beach Club to invite members of the Jones family to join.  According to this story, Rosalie Jones convinced Walter Abrams, whose shipyard was supposedly struggling, to sell his land to her.  She in turn sold the land to Standard Oil of New York, the rival of Standard Oil of New Jersey, whose president Walter Jennings was the founder of the Beach Club.  But since the Jones family owned the land in 1921 when the Beach Club was formed and since the deed to Standard Oil was signed by Walter Abrams not Rosalie Jones, the accuracy of the legend has to be questioned.

In any event, until they were torn down in 2005, Standard Oil’s tank farm would be the last remnant of Clamtown’s industrial past.

The Jones family didn’t sell the old Eagle Dock property until 25 years after it sold the shipyard property.   Dolores Brock purchased and just three months later sold the land to Harry Knight and August Carbone.  Four months after they acquired the land, Knight and Carbone requested that the zoning on the property be changed from residential to business.  The request was not met favorably by the neighbors.

Knight and Carbone intended to use the property to rent boats, sell refreshments and operate a bathing beach for profit.  They promised to tear down the existing old buildings and build a new dock and a refreshment stand and some bath houses.  Almost 200 people showed up for a hearing before the Huntington Planning Board in June 1948—only two spoke in favor of the re-zoning.   One of the supporters of re-zoning was none other than Rosalie Jones, who had argued unsuccessfully to have the property classified as business rather than residential when Huntington first adopted zoning laws in the early 1930s.  Jones noted that many in the room were not natives of Cold Spring Harbor, yet they seemed wary of any development that would attract outsiders.

Opponents were led by Johnston DeForest, who was one of the members of the commission that first proposed that Huntington should adopt a zoning ordinance.  Where Knight and Carbone saw a refreshment stand, opponents saw a bar.  Some saw the opposition as an attempt by wealthy residents to keep regular folks away from the town’s beaches.

After a summer of controversy, the application for re-zoning was denied.

On September 23, 1948, 42 concerned residents gathered at the home of B. Tappen Fairchild on Shore Road.  They resolved to form a charitable organization to purchase the Eagle Dock property and make it available to Cold Spring Harbor residents who did not have access to private beach facilities.  At the time 80 residents had made pledges totaling $24,000.  The beach would be available to residents of Cold Spring Harbor school district 8 at no charge.  The corporation formed to purchase and maintain the beach would be “charitable and educational and exist for the general welfare of the people” of Cold Spring Harbor.

On October 21, 1948, seven residents formed Eagle Dock Foundation, Inc., the purpose of which was

 To establish, equip, maintain and operate a public beach, playground and bathing facilities for the children and other residents of Cold Spring Harbor School District No. 8, to create and promote better under-standing and sympathy between the people of the community and to further the general welfare and health of all the people in the said School District.

The next month they purchased the 1.1-acre Eagle Dock property from Knight and Carbone for $22,293.11.  It was reported that Knight and Carbone managed to turn a nice profit on the sale.  In addition to the Eagle Dock property, which only included the roadway and the area between the current split rail fence and the Standard Oil property, the Foundation entered into a lease with Johnston DeForest for part of his property on the spit—the area up to the line of boulders near the current floating dock.  The rent was one dollar a year.

An early concern of the donors was the tax-deductibility of their gifts.  They were advised that no assurances could be made concerning deductibility, but that they should nonetheless claim the deduction on their tax returns.  The IRS initially refused to allow the deduction.  But one of the original supporters, Isabel Peters, pursued the case in Tax Court and in a landmark case finally prevailed in 1953.  The IRS was reluctant to accept the outcome, but acquiesced six years later.

From the beginning, the management of the beach was turned over to a committee of Cold Spring Harbor residents for the benefit of the children and families of Cold Spring Harbor.  A management committee of seven local residents was appointed in time for the 1949 bathing season.  The committee had the two old buildings near Shore Road torn down and a large amount of fill was brought in to level off the property and provide more space for playground and parking facilities.  Leslie Peckham, who was the first chairman of the committee, writes in Clamtown, which was published in 1962, that the old bulkheads “were demolished during the recent landscaping at Community Beach.  However, some of the piling was left standing—upon which rests a portion of the float ramp.”  Peckham also writes about adding earth and “other fill” to the cove to widen the road built by Dr. Jones in 1885. (Standard Oil had filled in the Cove north of the road when it built its storage tanks in the 1920s.)

The committee relied on volunteer labor and volunteer contributions.  In 1951 a new bathhouse, about the size of a garage, was built.  Water was provided by Standard Oil from its property at no charge to the beach.  On a year-to-year basis, beach privileges were extended to residents of school district 11 in Suffolk County.  School district 8 was the old East Side district, while district 11 was the West Side district and also included Laurel Hollow.  Over the years, the Foundation was concerned that Cold Spring Harbor’s growing population might preclude extending these privileges to district 11 residents.  The border between the two districts was just north of Lawrence Hill Road.  But eventually the privilege was made permanent.

In 1953, 195 families provided support for the beach, a second life guard was hired and the beach was opened seven days a week instead of just six.

Beach finances relied on voluntary contributions from residents, all of whom were issued admission cards.  Boy Scouts distributed pledge cards, but donations were slow to arrive.  It was not until 1961, that stickers were issued for the privilege of parking at the beach.

From the earliest days, vandalism, noise and unauthorized use were problems.  In 1954, it was decided to lock the gate at night.  In 1966, a high chain link fence was installed.  (The driveway entrance was moved to the north end of the property in 1956 as an accommodation to the Fairchilds, who lived across the street.)

Just a dozen years after its first season, Eagle Dock faced an existential crisis.  New York State had just acquired the Marshall Field Estate in Lloyd Neck.  The Parks Commission proposed building an extension of the Bethpage Parkway that would run up along Harbor Road and then along the east shore of Cold Spring Harbor—right over the beach.  The Foundation was very concerned.  The State made promises of either giving the Foundation money to buy other beach property—but where was there a beach to buy? —or to create a manmade beach along side the new parkway.  The Foundation surprisingly did not take a position to either support or oppose the Parks Commission’s plans, in part because the plans were not yet final.  But the Foundation did submit a memorandum to the Parks Commission outlining its concerns:

  1. The shore route should not be chosen because it will destroy or impair the natural harbor which is the principal physical asset of the area.
  2. The choice of the shore route does not take into account developments in transportation, such as monorails, helicopter, or hydrofoils, which may well be better methods of transportation to the new park before any route can be completed, and which would better serve the new park without spoiling the adjoining area.
  3. The choice of the shore route, and the substitution of other property for the property presently owned by the Foundation, may impose annual charges for maintenance on the Foundation which it will not be able to meet.
  4. The shore route raises practical problems regarding water and electric lines, the solution of which is unclear.

The issue was discussed every year at the Foundation’s annual meeting into the early 1970s, but no further information was provided by the Parks Commission.  Perhaps bearing in mind that Sunken Meadow Park opened in 1929, but the parkway leading up to it was not completed until 1957, the Foundation’s ongoing concern was justified.  The threat was not removed until 2004 when the Cold Spring Harbor Library secured a long-term lease from the Parks Commission for five acres on the proposed parkway right of way.  With the community’s library standing in the way, the parkway would not be built.

Even with the uncertainty presented by the proposed parkway, the beach thrived.  But by the 1980s, the beach was at a crossroads.   The dock built on the old pilings was destroyed by winter storms in 1981.  A floating dock was built to replace it.  In 1984, a reorganized and re-energized Management Committee announced plans for a major upgrade of the beach, including “dock restoration, landscaping, security enhancement, bathing beach improvement, and building restoration and improvement.”   The community responded to appeals for donations to realize these plans.

In 1986, the beach made several strides.  The sail locker was built and the floating dock was completed.  But the most important development was Priscilla DeForest Williams’ decision to donate the rest of the spit as well as the land under the Cove and land on the water side of Shore Road to the Foundation on the condition that the land be kept forever wild.

Throughout its history, Eagle Dock has been a place for Cold Spring Harbor residents to socialize with their neighbors.  A long-standing tradition is the annual clambake in August.  Over the years other events have been added to the calendar: Field Day, the Sunday Brunch, Dancing Under the Stars, S’Mores to mark the end of the school year, Wine & Cheese night, and even potluck parties.

In keeping with the terms of its charter that the beach was for the children of the community, in 2001, the Foundation entered into an agreement with the Cold Spring Harbor Rowing Club, the sponsor of the high school’s crew team.  Pursuant to the agreement, the Rowing Association constructed a boathouse and uses Eagle Dock for its practices.  The arrangement allows for greater use of the beach by the children of the community, without interfering with the swimming and boating that have always been the focus of beach activities.

In recognition of the importance of the fragile marine environment, in 2009, the Foundation—harking back to the educational aspect discussed at the Foundation’s 1948 organizational meeting—restated the beach’s mission statement:

The mission of Eagle Dock Community Beach is to establish, equip, maintain and operate a public beach, playground and bathing facilities for the children and other residents of Cold Spring Harbor and to promote a better understanding of the marine ecosystem of Cold Spring Harbor, including our beach and its surrounding coastal environs.

Eagle Dock Community Beach is dedicated to the protection of the marine ecosystem of Cold Spring Harbor in order to facilitate our continued access to a healthy waterfront.  Through the conduct of environmental education programs, our community is engaged in the stewardship of this important natural resource.

Environmental education programs have proven very popular and will help to ensure that the community remains sensitive to the need to protect its harbor.  Although the removal of the oil tanks was a welcomed development, the removal of the oil dock has accelerated erosion of the beach property presenting new challenges.  But with the community support Eagle Dock has enjoyed for the past sixty plus years, it is certain that the people of Cold Spring Harbor will continue to have a beach to call their own.

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Huntington’s Other Village Green

Posted in Cold Spring Harbor on November 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

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.

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