The Long Island History Project

Longtime Sayville resident Chris Bodkin continues his look back at Sayville's history. Today we talk about his time as a captain on the Fire Island Ferries and his move into local politics.  Then we look at a few of the stories behind Sayville's war veterans memorialized in Sparrow Park. Chapter 3 of Chris' story is coming soon.

Long-time Sayvile resident Chris Bodkin discusses his childhood in 1950s Sayville: life on the bay, Main Street, and the unexpected thrill of the first pizza store.

Special feed-only episode! Six stories of learning to drive on Long Island. 

Henry Livingston came to Babylon in 1869 and founded the South Side Signal. He made an immediate splash advocating for Babylon to split from the town of Huntington and went on to lead the paper into the 20th century. On this episode, Babylon Town Historian Mary Cascone relates the history of the paper: its influence, evolution, and style. We also trade stories of newspaper research, microfilm readers, and the glory of digitized collections. As a little side experiment - help us document the noble yet forgotten microfilm machine. Send us a picture of a microfilm reader in the wild to longislandhistoryproject [at] gmail.com Further Research South Side Signal at NYS Historic Newspapers Brooklyn Daily Eagle (from Brooklyn Public Library) Town of Babylon Historic Services Mary Cascone Amazon Author Page  

Mark R. Smith saves time in a bottle, literally. His antique bottle collection preserves the memory of local dairies, pharmacies, hotels and more. It also tells the story of a time when milkmen roamed the earth, when an outhouse was a man's castle, and when just about anything could be labeled "medicine." Listen as Mark walks us through the history of bottle making, the local businesses of Sayville and Oakdale, and his equally-obsessive love of ceramics. Further Research: Long Island Antique Bottle Association (Facebook) Antique Bottle Dive Off Long Island  

The 1989 fire that nearly destroyed the Terry-Ketcham Inn brought Bert Seides to tears but it also set him on the road to saving the historic Moriches landmark. Building from a small group of volunteers meeting around Mary and Van Field’s kitchen table, Bert marshaled support and learned to navigate a maze of regulations, paperwork, and government agencies to bring the 1693 Inn back to life. In this discussion he provides a road map for preservation projects and reveals the hard work involved, from painstaking research to outreach programs to, of course, book sales.

Bob Keeler wrote the book on Newsday, a candid history detailing the origin story of Long Island's original tabloid. On this episode we discuss that history, including the relationship of Alicia Patterson and Harry Guggenheim, the rollicking newsroom of the '50s and '60s, and more.   Bob also relates his own history at the paper, including his atypical Pulitzer Prize and his trip to see the Pope. Further Research Newsday: A Candid History of the Respectable Tabloid by Robert Keeler (find in a library) The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro (find in a library) Falaise: Sands Point Preserve Interview with journalist Karl Grossman on the Shoreham nuclear power plant Interview with the Barbash family on the Fire Island road

Imagine a city rising from the fields of Suffolk County in the early 20th cenutry, a wooden metropolis covering almost 20,000 acres. It has its own post office, theater, library and fire department. The place could fit close to 40,000 people with room for 15,000 horses. Imagine that and you've got Camp Upton. Today our guests Suzanne Johnson and David Clemens discuss the history of Camp Upton, the vast military training camp in Brookhaven that served the US Army in World War I and II. We focus on their new book, Camp Upton, from Arcadia Press which features images of the life of the camp throughout 1917-18 and beyond. Many of the images are drawn from the Longwood Public Library where both Suzanne and David were directors. You'll hear about the 77th Division, the Harlem Hellfighters, Irving Berlin, and the amazing feat of raising an army to fight The War to End All Wars. Further Research Camp Upton by Suzanne Johnson and David Clemens Longwood Public Library Digital Collection Camp Upton (via Brookhaven National Laboratory) Irving Berlin (Songwriters Hall of Fame)  

Few authors are more synonymous with a place and point in time than F. Scott Fitzgerald. His Great Gatsby came to define the 1920s and cast a golden aura across Long Island’s North Shore for all time. On today’s episode, Charles Riley guides us through the birth of The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s struggle to make it into a masterpiece. Charles is the director of the Nassau County Museum of Art and author of Free as Gods: How the Jazz Age Reinvented Modernism. Further Research: Free as Gods: How the Jazz Age Reinvented Modernism by Charles Riley. (find in a library) Nassau County Museum of Art So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan (find in a library) “Where is Jay Gatsby’s Mansion?” via Slate.

Melanie Cardone-Leathers is the Local History Librarian at the Longwood Public Library. Today she regales us with tales covering three centuries and many locations. There is Benjamin Tallmadge burning the British hay at Coram during the Revolution. And the boot-strapping of Gordon Heights by African Americans from Harlem and beyond. How about Camps Siegfried and Upton, the former a 1930s, Nazi-inflected retreat and the latter a staging ground for troops during World War I and II? To round it off, we experience the thrills of Fairy Town's roadside attractions and Connie tells her monkey story. Further Research: Thomas R. Bayles Local History Room Longwood Historic Photographs The Gordon Heights Archives The Tallmadge Trail Camp Upton