Pollock Krasner House

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center dates back to the late 19th century. The land was purchased in 1878 by James S. Corwin, a local fisherman, who built a house on the lot. In 1888, Mr. Corwin sold the property to Adeline H. King, who sold it two years later to David Howard, another fisherman. His son John Howard and his family lived in the house until 1926, when David Howard sold the property to John Quinn, who worked for the town highway department. His son Howard Quinn inherited it in 1933, and after his death in 1944, his estate put it on the market.   

Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner were shown the property by Edward Cook. The couple moved in on November 5, 1945.  The deed was transferred the Pollocks on April 15, 1946. They later bought adjacent land, eventually owning five acres.  Lee had a studio area in the back parlor, and Jackson painted in an unheated upstairs bedroom. In June 1946, he had the barn moved from behind the house to the north side of the property and renovated it as his studio.

Lee continued to work in the house until after Jackson’s death, when she began using the barn studio.  Initially the house had no central heating or indoor plumbing. Over time the couple made many improvements—one of the earliest was a back porch extension that accommodated an indoor toilet. In December 1949, after Jackson’s very successful solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, they had enough money to install full plumbing and central heating, and in the spring they had the house shingled.  After Jackson’s death in August 1956, Lee divided her time between Springs and New York City. She painted many of her major canvases in the barn studio between 1957 and 1982, after which ill health curtailed her productivity. 

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center was created under the terms of Lee Krasner Pollock’s will. She instructed her executors to deed the property to a charitable institution. She envisioned it as “a public museum and library,” to show the setting in which she and Jackson created many of their works, and as a place for the study of modern American art, especially the eastern Long Island art community.  In 1987 the property was deeded to the Stony Brook Foundation, a private, non-profit affiliate of Stony Brook University. 

In 1987-88, a team from New York Conservation Associates removed pressed wood squares that covered the floor, peeled up a layer of tar paper and revealed the floor surface on which Pollock painted from 1946-1952. The floor was then cleaned of tar paper residue.

When that covering was removed, the original floorboards were found to be intact, complete with the remnants of Jackson’s most famous poured paintings, including Autumn Rhythm, Convergence, Blue Poles, and Lavender Mist.  The painted surface was stabilized by a team of art conservators, and an exhibition of photographs and text panels chronicling the two artists’ careers was installed on the walls. The museum was opened to the public in June 1988. 

 

Source:

“Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.” History, www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/pkhouse/our-story/history.php

Ormston House

 John E. Aldred’s banking firm, Aldred & Co., financed an empire of public utilities. Aldred was a director of gas, water, power, and electric companies, and at one point chairman of the Gillette Safety Razor Co. 

In 1916, Mr. Aldred hired the fashionable architect Bertram Goodhue (1869-1924), seen below, to design his Long Island estate. Goodhue buildings have a reputation for ponderous magnificence, mostly of the Gothic Revival and Elizabethan Tudor persuasion. Henry W. Rowe was hired to design the stables and gate cottages, and recognized sculptors such as J. Selmer Larson designed fountains and statues.  The Olmsted Brothers (of Central Park fame) laid out the landscaping and gardens. A true Anglophile, Mr. Aldred made sure the estate had a touch of monastic ambience, popular among English gentry, and even imported English servants.  He named the estate the Ormston House.

The "Anti-Trust" laws passed by Congress, along with the federal and local property, capital gains, and income taxes,  in the 1940s made it impossible for many in Mr. Aldred's class to hold on to their vast possessions without severely depleting their wealth.

Since 1944, the Ormston estate has been a Ukrainian Orthodox monastery called St. Josaphats. A handful of novices lives and studies in the enormous former mansion, whose furniture was auctioned off in 1940, and labors mightily maintaining grounds that once required 35 full time gardeners.

Sources:

Foreman, John. A Secret World in Lattingtown, 1 Jan. 1970, bigoldhouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-secret-world-in-lattingtown.html. 

“History of St. Josaphat's Monastery.” + ST. JOSAPHAT'S MONASTERY +, www.stjmny.org/history-of-st-josaphats-monastery.html.

Alvin Cohen

 Alvin Cohen was born on May 26, 1926 in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Cohen attended Boston University, where he graduated in 1946 with a degree in Chemistry. Cohen intended to continue his education in medical school, but due to the death of his father, he had to take over the failing family appliance business.

In 1953, Cohen moved his family to Plainview, NY, so he could work for his uncle in Manhattan. His new job was as a shipping clerk for a dress manufacturing business in the Garment District. In 1960, he realized he was tired of a desk job, which he never truly wanted, and decided he was going to buy a six-acre chicken farm on Route 110. This six-acre parcel of land was going to allow him to create a family amusement park on Long Island.

Although Cohen’s vision was new and exciting for the area, the banks were not as excited about the idea and would not give Cohen a loan for $20,000. Cohen and an unnamed business partner decided to convince family members to give them small loans each that would amount to the total they needed, and they succeeded. After obtaining their loans, they purchased the land. Shortly after their purchase, New York State extended the Long Island Expressway to Route 110, which finally allowed for the boom of Suffolk County. This was big for their business due to its convenient location and close proximity to the expressway.

The park eventually opened in 1962 under the name: Adventureland 110 Playland. The park consisted of a restaurant, four rides, mini-golf course, and an indoor arcade. This park was a true family business with many members of the family pitching in to help run the park, including operating rides. With the success of the parks opening, Cohen was able to expand the park and had 16 rides.

Sometime in the early 1970s, Cohen became sole owner of the park. During this time, Cohen purchased 6 more acres of land that was attached to the property. This allowed him to expand the park even more, including an increase in the number of rides to 30. Following the success of his park, Cohen purchased another park in Rhode Island, and he also became a global consultant in the amusement park industry.

In 1977, Cohen decided to sell his park for an undisclosed amount of money and moved to Florida. After the move, he became a housing developer and philanthropist. Cohen was said to be a people person, which showed in his successful business, as well as becoming a philanthropist to help those he could. His success also allowed for his children and nephew (that he raised) to follow their dreams, as well as his dream, and all three of his children became doctors. Cohen lived out his the remainder of his life in Florida until his death in June of 2020, due to complications from COVID-19.

 

Source:

Barker, B. (2020, December 04). Alvin Cohen: Visionary founder of Adventureland. Retrieved December 21, 2020, from https://www.newsday.com/news/health/coronavirus/obituaries/adventureland-founder-alvin-cohen-obituary-1.46537685

 

Hallockville Farm Museum

 In the late 20th century, the approximately 520 acres in the northeast corner of Riverhead Town and a small portion of adjacent Southold Town came to be known as the “KeySpan Property.” It included about 300 acres of farmland, 200 acres of woodland, and over 5,000 feet of shorefront on Long Island Sound.

In the first decade of the 21st century, this became the site of a remarkable preservation story that created Hallock State Park Preserve and permanently prevented development on the adjacent farmland. The area referred to in the 19th century as “Hallockville.”

The Hallockville Museum Farm’s 28 acres are located on allotments originally granted to John Sweasy (the Homestead farm) and Barnabas Wines (the Cichanowicz farm). Grants were distributed according to wealth, with the richer inhabitants getting more lots.

Richard Howell was the earliest person to settle on the KeySpan property itself. In 1675, his father-in-law, William Hallock, gave him a 20-rod wide strip on the far west edge of his two allotments, running from Sound to Bay. The Howell family gradually acquired more land to the west and continued to live on the farm, now part of the KeySpan property, for more than 250 years until the last family member living there died in 1951.

Five old farmhouses stand on the Sound Avenue frontage of the KeySpan property, flanking both east and west the historic house and barns owned by the Hallockville Museum. Along with the homestead, the museum’s “catalogue house” and its staff house and three more structures nearby, the eleven houses are referred to as “Hallockville” because all of them (or their predecessors) were built or inhabited by members of the Hallock family in the 19th century.

In 1975, a group of concerned local residents began meeting to devise a way to save the Hallock homestead, its deteriorating outbuildings and the other farmsteads along Sound Avenue. In 1977, LILCO leased the Caleb Hallock  farmhouse and outbuildings to the fledging museum for 10 years, at $1 per year. At that time, plans were developed to save and restore fifteen historic structures along Sound Avenue on the LILCO property as a living farm museum and a center for traditional crafts.  In 1981, LILCO donated the homestead, the surrounding farm structures and two-and-a-half acres of land to the museum. That same year, the fledging museum held its first Fall Festival and its first Christmas open house in the homestead. In 1984, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1997, the museum purchased five more acres from the company for $100,000, bringing the museum’s holdings to 8.5 acres. This new parcel included a small piece east of the Homestead and property extending to the west almost to Herricks Lane, including the 1930’s Cichanowicz house and the site of Isaiah Hallock’s barn. KeySpan later donated a large barn built by the Naugles family, which the museum then moved onto this new property and restored.

After several years of restoration work, the museum opened its Naugles Barn in June 2003. 
During the winter of 2004 the museum moved the Trubisz Sprout House and Aunt Frances’s Washhouse) from the adjacent Trubisz farm and ultimately placed on new foundations behind the Hudson-Sydlowski House. Later that year, master decoy carver Jack Combs moved his decoy carving shop from Cutchogue and rebuilt it on a foundation just behind the Sprout and Wash Houses. In 2005 volunteers from the museum fenced in the front portion of the old Cichanowicz farm to make a proper pasture for its two cows.

In 2006, the Museum completed restoration of the 1930’s Cichanowicz Farmhouse and commenced furnishing the interior back to its Depression era appearance. In 2007, Hallockville dedicated a new interpretive kiosk, funded in part by the Trust for Public Land that told the story of the KeySpan property – from its early history through the stories of its exploitation and ultimate preservation. 

Source:

“HISTORY.” Hallockville Museum Farm, 17 Nov. 2020, hallockville.org/about/history/

Farmingdale COVID Stories

Tyron Hall/FortNeck

 Built in 1770 by David Jones, Tryon Hall was named after William Tryon, Governor of New York. It was a spacious building, 90 feet in length, overlooking South Oyster Bay. The entrance hall was 36 feet long by 23 feet wide, floored in southern pine, with a freestanding stair that was noted by everyone who entered. There was also a drawing room, a library, kitchen and a formal dining room on the first floor. There were five bedrooms upstairs and servants’ rooms on the third floor.

Thomas Jones, by then a Judge, used Tryon Hall to entertain fellow supporters of the King and also allowed them to stay there for their safety, earning the name “Refugee House.” It was renamed Fort Neck House after the American Revolution.

Unfortunately, Thomas Jones did not enjoy his mansion for very long, as he was forced into exile in England after the Revolution. By a 1781 Act of Attainder, naming him and 52 other Tory supporters, his property was seized by New York State and eventually given to his sister Arabella (he had no children), on condition that her husband append Jones to his name. He was David Floyd of the Patriot Floyd family and readily agreed, with the result that their first son became David Richard Floyd-Jones, confirmed by the New York Legislature in 1790.

Several generations of the family occupied Fort Neck, the latest being George Stanton Floyd-Jones. He became involved in establishing the Floyd-Jones Cemetery in 1892, reinterring not only the bodies of Thomas Jones and his family, but several of his relatives who had lived in Tryon Hall and were buried in a family plot behind the Hall. He spurred construction of an ornate Victorian-looking Massapequa train station in 1890, replacing a plain building put up by the railroad in 1880.

By the end of World War I, George Stanton Floyd-Jones had moved to Sewan (current site of Massapequa High School) and his family sold Fort Neck to Richard Corroon. Mr. Corroon converted the building into a roadhouse, expanding the kitchen and installing indoor plumbing for the upstairs rooms. The venture was not successful, however, and he allowed the building to remain idle and deteriorate. By the mid 30s there was talk of tearing it down, but the Nassau County Historical Society spurred efforts to save it.  These efforts led nowhere, however, and the building remained unoccupied until October 18, 1940, when a fire gutted it.

 The Historical Society of the Massapequas erected a historical marker to recognize the significance of Fort Neck/Tryon Hall in 1992.

 

Sources:

George Kirchmann, et al. “Massapequa's First Mansion.” Massapequa Observer, 9 Feb. 2015, www.massapequaobserver.com/massapequas-first-mansion/.

Kirchmann, George. “TRYON HALL/ FORT NECK HOUSE.” Massapequa, NY Patch, Patch, 9 June 2013, patch.com/new-york/massapequa/tryon-hall-fort-neck-house.

Marshall Field Estate

The Marshall Field Estate, which is also known as the Caumsett Manor, is one of the largest mansions on Long Island. It is also one of the Gold Coast Mansions. Marshall Field III purchased the property in 1920, which consisted of 1,426-acres of land, which he named Caumsett, after the Matinecock tribe’s original name for the peninsula which means place by a sharp rock.

Soon after the purchase of the land, the estate was built in 1924-25 for Marshall Field III to use as a hunting lodge and farm. It was designed by architect, John Russell Pope, who was famously known for designing the National Archives and Records Administration building, the Jefferson Memorial, and the West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The estate is an example of English Georgian design, but was adapted for a more modern (at the time) 20^th century American country home.

The homes original site was much larger than what is seen today. The west wing and east wing have since been demolished. These demolition projects have removed the original living room, master bedrooms, and servants’ quarters. The remainder of the house has been restructured and the rooms on all three floors have been rearranged or changed to serve a different purpose. An example of this would be that the dining room has been changed to serve a new purpose as a kitchen.

On February 3, 1961, New York State purchased the property for $4 million and they made it a state park for use of the people. The estate was eventually listed on the National Register of Historic Place in 1979, which helped preserve one of the largest Gold Coast Mansions. 

 

Sources: 

Caumsett Manor-Marshall Field Estate, Cold Spring Harbor New York. (2016, December 20). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from http://www.historic-structures.com/ny/cold_spring_harbor/caumsett_manor.php

Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve. (2020, October 20). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caumsett_State_Historic_Park_Preserve

John Russell Pope. (2020, November 14). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Russell_Pope