Local History Archives - Patchogue-Medford Library

Play Ball!

March 27, 2018 By Gary Lutz

Baseball

Major League Baseball’s Opening Day is upon us, with all of the requisite nostalgia, excitement about the blank slate and the promise of a new season, and hopefulness for, and dreams of, a championship year.

From 1937 until the late 1940s, Patchogue was graced with its own local independent baseball team, the Cubs.

1937 saw the organization of the squad, but the second World War forced them into a lengthy hiatus, after which they regrouped under Manager Paul Andrisani. The April 4, 1946 issue of the Patchogue Advance lists the names of the squad’s intrepid nine at that time, along with a request that any other team wishing to play against the team contact Mr. Andrisani. Fundraising was also apparently on their minds, and several ideas were mooted, including, as is commonplace today, showcasing, on the team’s scorecards, advertisements for local merchants.

Although it’s well known that many famous Major League Baseball players served their country in the second World War (among them Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio), this team was, possibly uniquely, composed entirely of veterans of the second World War.

Later in April, 1946, Newsday reported that the team was actively seeking a berth in the South Shore Baseball League, although Patchogue was, also according to Newsday, already represented in the League by an un-named club. But, just a few more days later, Newsday reported that the Cubs were apparently successful in their bid for the berth. The team’s home field, Wiedner’s Park, was located on Medford Avenue (Route 112) in Patchogue.

Soon after, in early May, Newsday listed George Dioguardo of Patchogue as the manager of the squad, and an open appeal to any other team on Long Island interested in playing against them was published. Under what circumstances the team’s story eventually ended is unknown, although newspaper coverage of the team’s activities can be found as late as the summer of 1947.

Also of note is the Medford Athletic Club’s baseball team, seen here in this photograph, taken on May 5, 1929. Can you help us identify its members, coaches, and umpire? If so, contact us.

Digital PML: New Photos Added To The “Patchogue & Medford Miscellanous Historical Photos Collection”

March 1, 2018 By Gary Lutz

A new group of photographs of Patchogue and Medford has been added to Digital PML's Patchogue & Medford Miscellanous Historical Photos Collection, including photographs of First Grade and graduating classes of Patchogue's schools in the early 20th Century. The collection features miscellaneous historical photographs of Patchogue and Medford, including photographs of businesses, school class portraits, and views of areas of Patchogue in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Digital PML is the Patchogue-Medford Library's repository of digitized materials, containing scanned books, postcards, photographs, maps, virtual exhibits and more.

New Celia M. Hastings Local History Room Website

February 27, 2018 By Gary Lutz

The Library has published a brand-new website for the Celia M. Hastings Local History Room, https://history.pmlib.org, showing the Room, its collections, its services, its policies, and its history, and with a scope including the history of Patchogue, Medford, Brookhaven Town, Suffolk County, Long Island, and New York State.

Curious about what happened here in the past? In East Patchogue, Medford, North Patchogue, Patchogue, the Pat-Med Area, in Brookhaven Town, in Suffolk County, on Long Island (as a region), or in New York State? This website is a great place to start, browse, read, explore, answer questions, do a little research…

It includes:

New York State History, including information on census, naturalization, vital & related records; colleges & universities of New York State; county histories; cities of New York State (New York City and its boroughs); Governors (Colonial & State); and U.S. leaders from New York State (Presidents, First Ladies, Vice Presidents, and Supreme Court Justices).
Long Island History, including Indian prehistory & history, county histories, town histories & records, and village histories.
Patchogue-Medford Area History, including histories of local Associations; biographies; business & industrial history; educational history; Fire Department history; historic buildings & structures; literary history; maritime history; Police (Constabulary) history; and religious history.
Library History, including period histories, chronologies, directories, images, haunts (Library locations), and a walking tour of Library history.
General Research Tools, including Digital PML, the subject headings in the Room's Vertical File, links to where to find historic newspapers, and our index to the Long Island Forum.
Specialized Research Tools, including lists of Long Island Genealogy Reference works; our birth, marriage and death index to the Long Island Advance; information on researching the history of your house; subject guides to Long Island history; historical commemorations & celebrations; and information on Long Island Espionage & Long Island in the Revolution.
Other Useful Contacts, including where to explore more about Patchogue-Medford Area history, Brookhaven Town history, Suffolk County history, New York State history, and Long Island history.

For more detailed information about what's on the site, visit this overview of the site.

Any questions or comments? Contact us.

Downtown Patchogue Walking Tour

December 12, 2017 By clocke

A Patchogue Downtown Walking Tour is available at the Reference Desk and via free cellphone app with audio, text and images at http://history.pmlib.org/patchoguewalkingtour or above on the Local History drop-down menu.

Patchogue is over 250 years old, named for the Pochaug Indians and divided and sold in a 1758 lottery. Over the next 130 years, mills built on creeks along today’s Montauk Highway were centers of commercial activity. By 1900, large mills employ many inhabitants and others work in the shipbuilding and seafood industries. The railroad’s arrival in 1869 revolutionizes travel to and from Patchogue. Hotels and boarding houses accommodate vacationers escaping city summer heat from 1880 to 1930. The resort industry spawns theaters with vaudeville acts, concerts, plays and lectures.

From the 1920’s to the 1960’s, Patchogue’s downtown area becomes a popular regional shopping center. In the 1960’s, shopping malls pull shoppers away leading to a few decades of decline. Patchogue’s current resurgence is due to determined Village officials, businesses and organizations. The renovated Patchogue Theater, new restaurants, music venues, shops and condominiums change Patchogue’s landscape once again.

The Patchogue Downtown Walking Tour describes architecture and history on South Ocean Avenue and East and West Main Street. The text and audio versions have numerous photographs and historic images, covering one era when hotels and a tavern occupied Main Street and another when vacationers took over, enjoying Patchogue’s streets and summer fun. Patchogue’s crowded days as a regional shopping center are reconstructed in stories about particular buildings. Patchogue’s industrial past is also covered in the walking tour.

Today, Patchogue’s vibrancy is reflected in new architecture and modern building facades. The beauty of older buildings decorated with masonry reliefs, Tiffany windows, Greek columns and marble facades is also on display.

The term ‘a sense of place’ describes a collection of visual, cultural and social qualities that provide meaning to a location. The historic fabric of older buildings adds much to a ‘sense of place’ in the built environment. This is what makes Patchogue ‘Patchogue’ and different from other towns or villages.

On the tour are two magnificent churches built four years apart: one Gothic and the other Romanesque. Two banks along the route are covered in white marble. A particular favorite of the tour’s author is the Furman Building, built 82 years ago during the Great Depression.

Once again, the tour is available at http://history.pmlib.org/patchoguewalkingtour.

TURNing Washington’s Spies from Dramatics Back into History: L.I. in the American Revolution

August 11, 2017 By Mark Rothenberg

TURN TV SERIES LOGO

Saturday, August 12th at 9 P.M. the final episode will air of the AMC dramatic series, TURN: Washington’s Spies – about Long Island’s own Culper Spy Ring, the United States’ first organized espionage ring, during the American Revolution. TURN gets its name from the word “turncoat,” which is another term for a traitor, and can also imply undercover operations. For many people on Long Island, around the country, and beyond its borders, news that Long Island has a history, much less a Revolutionary War spy ring operating at great personal risk behind British lines, came as a shock. The series is well-acted and directed, but the emphasis is largely on dramatics, too frequently at the expense of history, and of personal and family reputations. But, before the screenwriters’ view becomes too firmly embedded as what actually happened, or because it is likely to be so, it’s been time, over the past 4 years, to clear away some of the Ring Baloney.

[Read more…]

Lights, Camera, Action In Brookhaven Hamlet

May 17, 2017 By Gary Lutz

Oilfield

In 1960, the film version of Splendor In The Grass, which was based on the original novel by William Inge, was released. Set in Depression-era rural Kansas, it told the story of two high school students, Wilma Dean Loomis and Bud Stamper, who fall in love. Upon its release, the film was described by the New York Times as "frank and ferocious social drama that makes the eyes pop and the modest cheek burn", and the film received several award nominations as well as an Academy Award for its script.

And it was shot right here, in Brookhaven Town.

The August 11, 1960 issue of the Patchogue Advance, tongue firmly in cheek, reports that "overnight" an "oilfield" materialized on the property of Sullivan Gallo of East Patchogue. Selected because of its resemblance in the eyes of the assistant producer to rural Kansas, the property played host to, according to the paper, "some 65 persons" over the course of one week while shooting was completed.

Interestingly enough, the reported heat and humidity apparently did not stop the filmmakers from filming an incongruous Thanksgiving scene in the southwest corner of the living room, with Natalie Wood dressed in what must have been torturous woolens and even a bearskin rug at one point in the scene.

The Patchogue Motel, located at East Main Street and Maple Avenue, also played host to the entire cast and crew during the shoot.

The second part of the article also shows several photos taken during the shoot, including one of actress Barbara Loden’s hair being made up, upon which the author of the article comments that although the dresses worn by the actresses in the film are meant to reflect rural Kansas in the Depression era, the "girls still managed to look quite fetching".

See Photographs Of The Patchogue Hotel In The Collection Of The Celia M. Hastings Local History Room

Learn about Black History to know more about the U.S.

February 18, 2016 By Jose-Rodrigo

Parade Marchers dressed in white down a street in new york city. A protester holds a sign that says "The first blood for American Independence was shed by a Negro Crispus Attucks. Black History Month Resources

Silent protest parade in New York [City] against the East St. Louis riots, 1917

For Black History Month, the Patchogue Medford Library Adult Reference Department and the Local History Department have compiled a list of resources to help you learn more about Black culture and history.

Did you know that Crispus Attucks, a free African-American Dockworker, was the first casualty of the American Revolution?

Did you know that in 1917, 10,000 marchers protested silently against the lynching and race riots that were taking place in East St. Louis in New York City?

[Read more…]

Black History Month, February 2016: Some Readings, Viewings, Listenings

January 29, 2016 By Mark Rothenberg

Here’s a document that I’ve compiled for Black History Month, 2016. You can find it here.

Go on an adventure into the rich history of the State, Long Island Region, and Local History of African Americans who lived labored, loved, invented, composed, played, contributed, fought, and died here. Here you’ll find topics raging from slavery, manumission (freedom papers), abolition, emancipation, the Underground Railroad, daily life, the struggle against denigration and segregation, and for civil rights, education, dignity, equality. Jupiter Hammon (America’s first black poet), Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Gerrit Smith, John Brown, Booker T. Washington, Samuel Bolton (the pickle king of Long Island), Lewis Lattimer, Hugh Mulzac, Martin Luther King, Jr., Louis Armstrong, Jr., Jackie Robinson, Whoopie Goldberg, all appear here, and are just the most visible part of the history of the State and Long Island. All have left signature impressions, whether living here, or just passing through. Take a look at the classified links for readings, videos, listenings, that follow, that can only begin to hint at the local African American experience and tremendous contributions to our locale, made from the roots in the contact and colonial eras to our own day.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Patchogue Author, Poet, and Feminist

December 15, 2015 By Michael Buono

One hundred and sixty-five years ago, Elizabeth Oakes Smith announced to the world that she thought it would be best if society were abolished. The problems with the social order of mankind, were so ingrown, so intractable, that something better and altogether would have to be put in its place.

[Read more…]

See the shipwrecks throughout Long Island history at Patchogue-Medford Library

September 16, 2015 By Michael Sorrentino

The Bessie A. White sank a mile west of Smith's Point. Photo courtesy Eco-Photo Explorers

The Bessie A. White went aground a mile west of Smith’s Point. Photo courtesy Eco-Photo Explorers

Ever wonder what’s under the seas of Long Island?

Ships that have sunk throughout the waters of Long Island, including near the Patchogue area, will be explored in a multimedia presentation being given by Christopher Weaver and Michael Salvarezza of the Eco-Photo Explorers (EPE) organization.

The presentation will highlight the now-underwater vessels that wrecked from the Revolutionary War period through to modern times. Weaver and Salvarezza will show what the ships look like today and discuss the marine life that inhabits them.

The EPE is a New York based organization dedicated to promoting interest in protecting the environment through underwater photography. The organization’s website lists several shipwrecks, including the USS San Diego which has been 13.5 miles south of the Fire Island inlet for almost a century after an explosion caused it to sink on July 8, 1918.

A multimedia presentation showing a history of Long Island shipwrecks will be at Patchogue-Medford Library. Photo Credit: Michael Sorrentino

Also listed is the Bessie A. White, a Canadian schooner which went aground a mile west of Smith’s Point on Long Island on Feb. 6, 1922. The ship could not be saved, and had 15 tons of coal on board.

The lecture, which is taking place Thursday at 7 p.m. in Meeting Room A&B, is being cosponsored by the Greater Patchogue Historical Society and the library. Registration for the event is recommended, which can be done online by clicking here or by calling the library at 631-654-4700.