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————————————————————— The Peconic Bay Shopper • Preserving Local History • July 2011 —————————————————————2

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On Our Cover —The Peconic Bay Shopper is published monthly eleven months each year. (There in no January issue.)

BATHING AT MANHANSET HOUSE, Shelter Island, 1904Manhanset House, an elegant Shelter Island resort, opened in 1873. The guests were wealthy yachtsmen who could safely moor their magnificent yachts in the secluded harbor. The first hotel burned in 1896 and was replaced by another, but this one burned down in 1910, never to be rebuilt. (Shelter Island was purchased from the Manhanset Indians by wealthy sugar merchants from Barbados.)Look for this photo, courtesy of the Shelter Island Historical Society, in their 2012 calendar. Featuring turn of the century photographs from the Historical Society’s archives, the calendar will be available in the Havens Museum Store and Gallery, 16 South Ferry Road, Shelter Island.

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————————————————————— The Peconic Bay Shopper • Preserving Local History • July 2011 ————————————————————— 3

The Evolution of Fun:

The Growthof the North Fork

fromFarmland

to Vacationland

— PART I —

by Antonia Booth, Southold Town Historian

The idea of leisure time and what we know as vacation (a regularly sched-uled period spent away from work or duty) is of relatively recent vintage in the timeline of American history. During the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth, only landed aristocrats had money enough and time to take their ease in the country. They usually traveled by private coach or by sloop and brought along servants and plenty of luggage.

An early exception was the poet Walt Whitman who first visited the North Fork of Long Island when he came to see his “dear sister” Mary. Two years young-er than Walt, Mary Elizabeth married a twenty-four year old ship-builder, Ansel Van Nostrand, in 1840. The couple bought a house near the corner of South and Third Streets in Greenport and her brother began staying with them when the whaling center had only 600 inhabitants, 100 dwelling places, just a few

One of the first automobiles in Southold Town was this 1905 Oldsmobile. A precursor of the auto was the bicycle which needed smooth and well-built roads in order to prevent dangerous spills and burst tires. Early records of our local Police Department are taken up with a multiplicity of accidents from the first cars on local roads. Pictured above are: Rose Smith, John Howell and Bill Smith. Good roads and efficient transportation helped make the North Fork a tourist destination. At one time it was believed that speeds over twelve miles an hour damaged the brain.


shops, two churches, one schoolhouse and one large ho-tel, the Clark House, opened in 1831 and built for Captain John Clark of Mattituck by Captain Caleb Dyer of Orient. Greenport quickly grew in size and Walt described the vil-lage as “a pretty town.” He loved its “good harbor, its salt water and fish, neat new houses” and the “interesting speci-mens of humanity to be scared up in all quarters of this diggings.” On the first few of Whitman’s trips east he traveled on the driver’s box of the stage-coach between Brooklyn, where he worked as a newspaperman, and Orient Point. To make the most of the two-and-a-half-day jaunt he en-joyed the fresh air outside the coach and chatting with Hull Conklin, the driver. Once the railroad came through the North Fork to Greenport in 1844, it opened the area to people of all class-es. Ambitious wives of farmers and fishermen found they could rent a room in their house to working-class city folk who had at most, a week’s vacation, and for whom fresh air, fresh food and unadulterated milk were rare and precious commodities. Many of these visitors worked in factories and lived in crowded sub-standard housing. East of Greenport there was already a huge summer hotel, the Orient Point House, (later known as the Orient Point Inn). In 1880 it was described as “one of the finest wa-tering places in the United States” and “the oldest summer resort in the country.” Orient Point was originally called Oysterponds but received its present name about 1850 for its “beautiful view of the eastern sea.” The Inn was original-ly built around 1810 by the Latham family and operated by them until 1860 when it was purchased by M. B. Parsons. Whitman also stayed at the Orient Inn and did much

The Orient Point Inn, formerly the Orient Point House, near the ferry to New London when owned and operated by Arnold Mitchell and his family. Note that luncheon was $1.50. In an earlier incarnation, Walt Whitman stayed at the Inn as did many other famous and infamous people.

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The bicycle craze was particularly intense on Long Island where there were one thousand “wheels” in Greenport alone. Bicycle paths were built and can still be glimpsed from Laurel east to the village. The League of American Wheelmen endorsed a hotel in each hamlet of any size. Cycles were licensed and in this photo by Henrietta Payne the young fellows seem to have packed lunch and a rolled blanket.


of his reading and writing at the Point. To-ward the end of his life he recalled: “Later, at intervals, summers and falls, I used to go off, sometimes for a week at a stretch, down in the country, or to Long Island’s seashores-there, in the presence of outdoor influences I went over thoroughly the Old and the New Testaments, and absorbed (probably to better advantage to me than in any library or indoor room-it makes such a difference where you read)……the Iliad…I read first thoroughly on the peninsula of Orient, north-east end of Long Island, in a sheltered hollow of rocks and sand, with the sea on each side.”* Not only did the Long Island Railroad bring many passengers to the north shore of the island but also, about 1890, the “safety” bicycle replaced the high-wheeled type of cycle popular for the previous twenty years. As the bicycle craze spread, bicycle clubs were quickly formed in almost every hamlet and the League of American Wheelmen appointed an official hotel in every significant town. Bicycles were licensed and bicycle paths were built. The roads that had been made smoother for cycling paved the way (no pun intend-ed) for the introduction of automobiles in the early twentieth century. Camping out was popular, and tents dotted the shores of Long Island Sound. Hiking and track sports, croquet and lawn tennis were part of the explosion of out-door games. Wher-ever there was waterfront, yachting and sailing became popular pastimes. Farmers found raising potatoes brought more money than raising cattle. Land val-ues rose as more small cottages were built near the water and small summer commu-nities grew up around large frame hotels. Improvements in transportation (railroad, bicycles, autos) and communication (the

In the 1890s, Margaret Kelly Conway and her husband Patrick operated Horton’s Point House with a mile-long frontage on Long Island Sound in Southold. Her brochure, present-ing the amenities of the resort, boasted a large oak grove in which residents could relax and breathe “pure air free of malaria.” The Conways also provided “plenty of fresh eggs, milk (from their own Alderney cows) and vegetables.” The latter, all raised on the hotel grounds, were offered to those who took their meals at the hotel. After the Conway era, John Lellman of Greenport owned and operated the hostelry as did a Mrs. Sands. Charles J. Hannabury, a Mattituck farmer, also leased and ran the hotel for a time. There was also a Conway Inn (really a bar-room according to the late Helen Conway). It was on the west side of Youngs Avenue near the railroad station, north of the tracks.


telegraph and the telephone) made dis-tances seem shorter. Long Island increas-ingly became not only the garden of New York City but also its amusement and recreation ground. Every taste, it seemed, could be gratified. Quiet spots for reflec-tion were available as they’d been for Walt Whitman in Orient. Plenty of action was at hand for the sportsman. A 1903** history of Long Island, in a chapter titled “Summer Resorts”, de-scriptively grazes Riverhead, Aquebogue and Jamesport, saving its real enthusiasm for the easternmost hamlets as the north “fluke” of the island narrowed down: “Franklinville (now Laurel) is a pretty vil-lage, at peace with all the world” and goes on to mention its “colony of summer resi-dents.” The “modest” village of Mattituck has fine water views both to the north and to the south….having comfortable inns and hospitable farmhouses for the enter-tainment of visitors…it has won deserved repute as a place of summer outing.” Cu-tchogue is described as a “sightly” and “pretty” town on one of the best roads in America, the “long straight highway lead-ing from Riverhead to Orient.” “These highways between verdant stretches of farm land, in the shade of noble trees, by the shores of shining lakes, and in sight of-ten of the mighty sea, offer a perpetual in-vitation to walking, cycling, and driving.” The author passes quickly through Peconic with its “broad, shaded (main) street” and “its headland, Nassau Point.” He points out that Southold had, in 1890, celebrated “with much ceremony” the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its founding, mentioning its attractive hamlet center where stores, schools and churches were grouped. On the history goes to Greenport, both “progressive and interesting” with over 3000 inhabitants, a resort and a busi-ness center with boat connections to Shel-ter Island, New London, and Sag Harbor, and “every means of outdoor diversion.” “Boating, sailing, fishing and shooting are excellent.” “A glittering sapphire” is Pe-conic Bay and we push on toward Orient with one thousand residents, and further to the Point, where Walt Whitman once read and studied, “into the bed of the At-lantic.” (To Be Continued).

*Penguin Classics, “Walt Whitman, the Complete Poems”) 1982**Peter Ross, History of Long Island, Volume I, 1903

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Greenport Harbor: These paddlewheel steamships provided travel links between Connecticut, Greenport, Southold, Shelter Island and Sag Harbor. In the 1880s the steamers would be met by trains, freight was shipped at low rates, and good meals aboard were only fifty cents.


The Mattituck House, across an unpaved lane from the famous Octagon House, built on the site of Hubbard’s Tavern, perhaps the most important inn in Mattituck’s history where Thomas Jefferson and James Madison stopped for a day in 1791. Mattituck also had the Eureka House, also known as McMillan House; C. McMillan, Prop., a hotel north of the train depot on Love Lane offering “special attention to transient guests.” In addition there was the (recently renovated) Glenwood Hotel on Route 25, a residence converted to a hotel with a basement café in the 1890s.


The Arshamomaque Inn at Beixedon, one of the first summer colonies on the North Fork. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, summer hotels and boarding houses advertised widely to attract visitors. Some used as a lure the idea of fresh and healthful produce. Others pushed the notion of “no malaria”, while still other proprietors touted the availability of salt-water bathing. For the Arshamomaque Inn on Peconic Bay, a mile east of Southold’s business center, fishing was the great enticement. The Inn opened in 1921 and made much of the weak-fishing season which came in with the lilacs, from May 15 each year to the latter part of June. Dredging provided a deep water harbor right in front of the building where boats were waiting to carry residents to the fishing grounds for a day’s sport. Ads promised a good night’s sleep on Beautyrest mattresses in preparation for a day spent in a fisherman’s paradise.

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