Huntington Arsenal

 Built in 1740, the Huntington Arsenal on Park Avenue just south of Main, is thought to be the only one left of its kind on Long Island. 

Joseph Wickes built the original portion of the house, which sat on 1.5 acres of land, and used it to store grain.  Wickes then sold the building to Gershom Sexton who remodeled and converted it into a livable dwelling. The six-foot extension included a room with a fireplace and another to the back of the house.

The arsenal used during the American Revolution and it was also the residence of Job Sammis and his family from 1748 to 1789.  A weaver by trade, Sammis settled in the home with his wife Elizabeth Kellum and many children.

In 1765, Sammis made additions of his own to the house to make it larger. He added another small room on the north side and built a second story which was accessed from the fire room by ladder. It is said he helped the Suffolk County Militia by storing weapons and gun powder in the added space. 

When repairs were made to the building in 1930, a small cache of colonial muskets were found in the original walls, most likely hidden by Sammis prior to the British occupation of Huntington on September 1, 1776.

Sammis died in 1792 and Elizabeth passed away four years later. The Town of Huntington purchased the arsenal in 1974 and it is now a restored house museum, furnished as it was in the 18th Century. It is open for special events and, by appointment. The Arsenal is also the headquarters of the Order of the Ancient and Honorable Huntington Militia.

 

Sources:

“The Arsenal.” The Arsenal - Town of Huntington, Long Island, New York, huntingtonny.gov/content/13747/99530/16525/default.aspx. Accessed 26 July 2024.

 

O’Connor-Arena, Melissa. “A New View: The Old Town Green Series - The Arsenal.” Huntington, NY Patch, Patch, 22 May 2010, patch.com/new-york/huntington/a-new-view-the-old-town-green-series-the-arsenal.

Massapequa Lake & Preserve

The man-made lake at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Merrick Road began being constructed in 1837. As the lake bed began to take shape, more and more soil was piled around the perimeter of the project. At the conclusion of the excavation work, the water from the dammed and diverted Massapequa Creek was allowed to flow into the scooped-out area. David S. Jones had the Massapequa Creek that flowed from Bethpage to the Great South Bay, diverted in order to cut down trees and remove stumps and brush to create the lake for his third wife Mary Clinton. Jones created the island in the center and named it Mary’s Island. Spillways were built and the water was allowed to flow to the Great South Bay under South Post Road, known now as Merrick Road. The Jones family lived in a mansion near the lake. During the 1940s, the Richard A. Corroon family took up residence in the mansion. It was also known as the Corroon Estate by the residents and the lake as Corroon’s Lake. 

The Peter J. Schmitt Massapequa Preserve was originally part of the New York City water supply property and was acquired by Nassau County in 1981. The preserve is divided into three sections bounded by major roadways. The southern section, from Merrick Road to Sunrise Highway, contains the most diverse and ecologically valuable lands. Freshwater swamps, marsh, stream, lake and sandy-bog area provide habitat for many rare and endangered Long Island plants, including orchids, carnivorous sundews and bladderworts. The longest hiking trail in Nassau County, the Nassau-Suffolk Greenbelt Trail, begins at Merrick Road and Ocean Avenue and continues through the length of the preserve, ending at Cold Spring Harbor. 

Sources:

Meyer, John H. “A Lake in Massapequa Made Just for Mary.” Massapequa Post , 4 Jan. 2019, www.massapequapost.com/articles/a-lake-in-massapequa-made-just-for-mary/. 

“Peter J. Schmitt Massapequa Preserve.” Peter J. Schmitt Massapequa Preserve | Nassau County, NY - Official Website, www.nassaucountyny.gov/2905/Peter-J-Schmitt-Massapequa-Preserve. Accessed 16 July 2024. 

Kissam House - Huntington

 Dr. Daniel Whitehead Kissam came to Huntington from Glen Cove in 1795 to practice medicine. In 1661, John Wescott built a house here and sold it to Thomas Powell in 1663. The house passed through several different owners and may have been used to quarter British troops during the revolution. Timothy Jarvis, a housewright, acquired the property and built the present house for Dr. Kissam. In 1840, Dr. Charles Sturges, the son-in-law of Dr. Kissam, added a “modern” kitchen wing and converted the old kitchen to a formal dining room. 

Sometime in the 1830s, with two families living in the house, it was remodeled. The back parlor had been converted into an apartment for Dr. Kissam and his wife. In order to compensate for the lost room and to adhere to the new fashion, the kitchen was converted into a dining room with Egyptian Revival details. An extension was built to the rear to accommodate a new, modern kitchen. Dr. Kissam died in 1840 and left to house to Charles Sturges.

The Sturges’ turned the original kitchen into a formal dining room and added the “new” kitchen to the rear of the house in 1840. They lived in the house until 1857, then it was owned by the Owen, Fuller and Taylor families until the Huntington Historical Society purchased it in 1967 from Hilda Taylor.

Today, the house, which has been restored to its 1830s appearance, and barn are used for educational programs, tours and festivals. Restoration and reinterpretation of the interior was begun by the Society in 1984. The home is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sources:

Blough, Kay. “No. 88: Dr. Daniel W. Kissam House Museum.” Huntington, NY Patch, Patch, 20 Apr. 2011, patch.com/new-york/huntington/no-88-dr-daniel-w-kissam-house-museum. 

 “The Dr. Daniel Whitehead Kissam House .” Town of Huntington, www.huntingtonny.gov/filestorage/13747/99540/16499/Dr._Daniel_Whitehead_Kissam_House.pdf. Accessed 17 June 2024. 

“Kissam Property.” Huntington Historical Society, www.huntingtonhistoricalsociety.org/kissam-property.html. Accessed 17 June 2024. 

Pagan-Fletcher Restoration

 In June 1834, the Pagan family, which included Robert, his wife Ellen, and their four young children, immigrated from Scotland. Pagan purchased 78 acres in Valley Stream. Pagan took up farming and grew rye, buckwheat, oats, corn, and potatoes.

In the early 1850s, Pagan opened a general store on his property. Also around that time, Ellen, a devout evangelical with Methodist leanings, opened her home to fellow worshippers, and conducted religious services. From the late 1850s through the 1870s, Pagan’s son-in-law, William Fletcher, married to Pagan's daughter Catherine, bought land that once belonged to Pagan. The final family to live in the homestead were the Fairchilds; related to the Pagans through marriage. The Fairchild family, fourth generation Americans, owned Fairchild Publications, the publishers of "Women’s Wear Daily.” 

In 1942, the Louis Fairchild family left, and another brother, Emil (not married to a Boyd sister) moved in full-time. Emil, Martha, and their three grown children: Donald, Gordon, and Jane, all lived in the house. Donald, the eldest, crayoned murals on the third floor landing, hall, and bathroom. 

In 1948, a year after Emil’s passing, the house, and remaining 10 acres were sold to the Lynwood Housing Corp. Between 1949 and 1950, Lynwood built Lynwood Gardens, a mid-century community of 49 homes. Lynwood used the old Fletcher estate for storage and office space. During Lynwood’s occupancy, many of the original features of the home were stripped, damaged or destroyed. 

In 1977, the Village of Valley Stream, under the leadership of Mayor Dominick Minerva, authorized the purchase of the home, which had foreclosed, for $40,000; rescuing it from demolition. In 1983, the Fletcher estate was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. From 1988 to 1992, the building was renovated and restored.  The Pagan-Fletcher Restoration is operated by the Valley Stream historical society and maintained by the Village of Valley Stream.

Source:

“Pagan-Fletcher Restoration & Tours.” Village of Valley Stream, www.vsvny.org/index.asp?SEC=17E2184D-D1F2-402C-8953-35B0520559EA&DE=7B89F47B-4238-4245-BF3D-EC35458038CC. Accessed 28 May 2024. 

Big Duck

In 1931, Riverhead duck farmer Martin Maurer commissioned some local builders to create this 10-ton eye-catcher using concrete (technically, "ferrocement") applied over a wooden frame. Taillights from a Model T Ford became its eyes, glowing red at night. Maurer sold ducks and eggs from the shop in its belly.  The builders Smith and Yeager completed the concrete finish work on the Big Duck which was featured in Atlas Cement's 1931 calendar. In 1937, Martin Maurer moved the building to Flanders, where it occupied a prominent location near the duck barns and marshes of Maurer's new duck ranch.

Maurer patented his fowl creation, and the Duck became the darling of vacationing New Yorkers -- particularly husband and wife architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, who invented the term "duck architecture" in their 1972 book, Learning From Las Vegas. This explain why, in the world of architecture, any building shaped like its product is called a "duck." 

The Big Duck -- 30 feet long, 20 feet high, and 18 feet wide -- has shifted locale a few times. In the 1980s, when the land on which the Duck sat was earmarked for development, giant duck preservationists and the Friends for Long Island's Heritage campaigned to save it. The Duck was donated to the county. On January 27, 1988, it was moved from Flanders to Hampton Bay along Route 24, to the entrance of Sears-Bellow County Park. However, by 2007 it was clear that the original land would not be developed, so the Big Duck was moved back to its Flanders spot.

The shop still operates -- now as a tourism center for the East end of Long Island, selling duck souvenirs to flocks of city weekend-trippers. The interior of the Duck offers a small display of Duck artifacts, photos, and news clippings, and if you time your visit just right you'll find a volunteer manning an exhibit in an adjacent barn about duck farming.  It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

Sources:

“Big Duck.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Mar. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Duck

“The Big Duck, Flanders, New York.” RoadsideAmerica.Com, www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2173. Accessed 16 May 2024

Holland Torpedo Boat Station

During the Civil War, John Philip Holland, an Irishman, knew that iron shipbuilding would render the British fleet invincible, thus preventing Ireland from achieving freedom from British rule. With visions of thwarting British naval supremacy, Holland began designs for a self-propelled submarine. Settling in New Jersey, Holland continued work on his plans. He brought his novel designs to the Secretary of the Navy. 

Through most of the next two decades, Holland continued to upgrade his designs and build prototype subs – none of which were ever commissioned by the Navy until his sixth design, the “Holland” in 1897. 53 feet long carrying a crew of five, the Holland had a dual power system and a torpedo tube.

The redesigned sub underwent testing in New York Harbor; while the seas were calm enough, shipping traffic, safety concerns, nosy onlookers and foreign spies deterred proper trials. In spring of 1899, Holland and Rice moved the sub and all operations to New Suffolk, leasing the Goldsmith and Tuttle shipyard for $10 per month. 

Submarine trials continued through the rest of 1899 within a three-mile course plotted in Cutchogue Harbor and Peconic Bay. On April 11, 1900 – considered to be the founding date of the U.S. Submarine Force – the Navy purchased the Holland for $150,000. The USS Holland (SS-1) was put into service on October 12, 1900 as the first commissioned submarine in US Naval history. Subsequently, the Navy ordered six additional Holland-type submarines, all of which underwent trials at the submarine base in New Suffolk, known as the “Holland Torpedo Boat Station.” Holland Torpedo Boat Station had engineers, mechanics, draftsmen, machine shops, housing and all the supplies needed to operate the seven submarines at Holland Torpedo Boat Station.

The base remained in operation from 1899 through 1905, when Electric Boat Company moved to Groton, Connecticut. A historic marker was placed where the station was by the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council.

Sources:

“Holland Torpedo Boat Station.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Nov. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Torpedo_Boat_Station

Philips, Alice. “New Suffolk: The First US Submarine Base.” North Fork Real Estate Showcase, 25 Oct. 2021, northforkrealestateshowcase.com/new-suffolk-first-us-submarine-base

Long Island Automotive Museum

 Henry Austin Clark, Jr. opened the Long Island Automotive Museum in 1948 to store his burgeoning collection of antique cars. It was located on about 8 acres along County Road 39 in Southampton. Early on, Clark tended to focus on thoroughbreds and other significant American cars of the early 20th Century. Later, he amassed a collection of fire trucks and hosted brass-era flea markets at the museum among other auto-centric events. 

Henry Austin “Austie” Clark Jr. was a Harvard freshman when he acquired his first early auto, a Ford Model T made in 1915, two years before he was born. After leaving the Navy, where he served as a radar technician in World War II, he began collecting vintage vehicles in earnest. Clark owned some 250 autos and countless other motorized devices (a gas-powered pogo stick). What separated him from other collectors was his role as a one-stop shop. His museum hosted “The Iron Range,” a sporadic flea market of rare parts, many made of brass from the 1890s to World War I.  Clark filtered his encyclopedic knowledge into The Standard Catalog of American Cars: 1802-1945, a bible for collectors and historians. He was the chief researcher for writer Beverly Rae Kimes.

The museum closed in 1980 due to declining revenues. Clark auctioned many of the vehicles when he closed the museum. In 2017, Skip Norsic bought the property to use as storage for his company.

Sources:

“Remembering Henry Austin Clark Jr. and the Long Island Automotive Museum.” Hemmings.Com, www.hemmings.com/stories/2014/08/19/remembering-henry-austin-clark-jr-and-the-long-island-automotive-museum. Accessed 11 Apr. 2024

Strohl, Daniel. “Site of Former Long Island Automotive Museum Sells Decades after It Closed.” Hemmings.Com, www.hemmings.com/stories/2017/08/31/site-of-former-long-island-automotive-museum-sells-decades-after-it-closed. Accessed 11 Apr. 2024