The Long Island Museum

The Long Island Museum, which is situated on a nine-acre campus off Route 25A in Stony Brook and not far from the famed Three Village Inn and the still-operating Grist Mill, provides visitors with an immersion into the region's rural past through three contemporary exhibition buildings and five real-life structures.

It exhibits American history and art with a connection to Long Island and was one of the few Smithsonian affiliates in the nation to get accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in 1978 for the quality of its exhibitions, programs, and collection care.

It can be traced back to the Suffolk Museum, which was founded at the end of the Great Depression by five founding members: Ward Melville, his wife Dorothy Bigelow Melville, renowned naturalist Robert Cushman Murphy, a local doctor named Winfred Curtis, and insurance broker O. C. Lempert.

The Suffolk Museum's original Christine Street building still stands today.

The History Museum was built on one side of Route 25A as a result of the search for a new headquarters that was sparked by the installation of carriages and a growing collection in 1952.

It was new to the region but was formerly housed in the "Museums at Stony Brook."

The D. T. Bayles Lumber Mill, whose history dates back to 1874 and which was in operation until 1955, previously stood on the site.

The structure was thereafter bought by Melville.

According to the Long Island Museum website, Ward Melville "always wanted Stony Brook to be a community like those seen in New England."

"This idea served as the inspiration for the Long Island Museum, and as nearby old houses were skillfully tucked onto the grounds, the museum's surroundings eventually took on the appearance of a New England town.

The museum has developed since 1939 to become a preeminent Long Island institution and the only Smithsonian member in the area."

 

MUSEUM OF HISTORY

The location of shifting art exhibitions is the History Museum, which also acts as the visitor center and gift store.

For instance, its most recent exhibition, "Fire and Form: New Directions in Glass," featured fifty pieces by eight contemporary artists, whose range of methods, sources of inspiration and points of departure revealed the nearly limitless potential of sculpture.

The distinct Cowles Gallery, which honors Sharon Cowles, a recent major donor to the museum and former neighbor of Dorothy and Ward Melville, displays items from the permanent collection.

MELVILLE CARRIAGE MUSEUM OF DOROTHY AND WARD

The 40,000 square foot Dorothy and Ward Melville Carriage Museum, which is the focal point of the Long Island Museum complex and is situated across Route 25A, portrays the pre-motorized transportation era with the aid of more than a hundred horse-drawn vehicles on display in eight galleries.

Its main attraction is the "Grace Darling," a 45-passenger, exquisitely adorned omnibus that was originally drawn by a half-dozen horses.

It is evident as soon as the visitor enters the building. It was used on trips to coastal Maine during the 1880s and the early 20th century.

It was luxuriously upholstered and spring-equipped to lessen wheel impacts on dirt trails.

In the "Going Places" Gallery, you may see carriages that were frequently used on Long Island as well as a fiber optic map that shows how local transportation networks evolved.

One of its displays, the Wells Fargo Coach, serves as an example of a vehicle made by Wells Fargo and Company, whose transportation services were essential to the nation's westward expansion. In April 1887, it began operating an overland passenger service between Sacramento, California, and Omaha, Nebraska, charging a then-astronomical $275.00 price for the trip.

The "Carriage Exhibition" Gallery, which is modeled after the transportation structure from the 1893 World's Fair, emphasizes the richness that money may add to a carriage.

The exhibition "Making Carriages: From Hometown Shop to Factory" showcases the museum's collection of cars that the Studebaker Brothers factory-made, as well as the restored Graves Brothers Carriage Shop from Williamsburg, Massachusetts, which was built in the 19th century.

The "Streets of New York" Gallery features replica burning buildings along with carriages and other vehicles that formerly roamed the city's busy streets.

The visitor can follow the history of mass transportation by traveling in one of them, a street car from 1887. Between 1832 and 1917, New York City's population could be moved on horsecar lines that were pulled by one or two horses.

They were replaced by powered street cars and trolleys, which were then supplanted by elevated railroads that were driven by steam in the end by electric underground subways.

The Crawford House Coach, which is displayed in the "Driving for Sport and Pleasure" Gallery, was purchased by the New Hampshire resort of the same name in 1880 and used to travel the slender, winding roads between the railroad station and the hotel carrying up to 20 passengers, their luggage, and goods.

An intermodal transportation scene is recreated in "Long Island in the Carriage Era." At one time, a real deport wagon would collect up individuals at the Long Island Railroad station in Stony Brook and transport them to the nearby towns. The recreation is finished with the sound of steam engines puffing.

The "Gentlemen Coach House" and the "European Vehicles" exhibits refute the idea that horse-drawn carriages aren't associated with luxury.

The first exhibits the lavish carriages that served as the model for the 19th-century Gold Coast carriage houses that were formerly an essential part of Long Island's North Shore mansions, and the second exhibits the royal carriages of European nobility.

INSTITUTE CAMPUS

Except for the Dorothy and Ward Melville Carriage Museum, which is reached by walkways, the rest of the Long Island Museum campus's historic buildings have a feeling of a rural setting.

One of them, the Samuel H. West Blacksmith Shop, was founded in 1834 and was first situated off of Main Street in the neighboring town of Setauket.

The building, made of round-sawn mortise and tenon timbers, was completely rebuilt between 1875 and 1893.

It served as the hub for his many interconnected professions, which included blacksmithing, wheel and vehicle making, and repair, and horseshoeing.

However, the advent of the motorized automobile in the 1920s quickly eliminated its necessity.

Three decades later, The Museums of Stony Brook bought the building, which is now home to historical treasures.

Its neighbor, the 1794 Williamson Barn, was formerly situated on the Stony Brook farm of Revolutionary War hero Jedidiah Williamson, who also worked as a farmer, millwright, and carpenter.

The Timothy Smith farm in St. James once housed the adjacent 1867 Smith Carriage Shed, which was used to shelter carriages from bad weather as parishioners attended services at the nearby St. James Episcopal Church. During this time, its wrought iron rings were used as horse ties.

Without the virtually iconic one-room schoolhouse, no 19th-century renovation would be complete, and the Long Island Museum complex does not fall short in this regard.

It was erected by Frederick A. Smith in 1877 on Sheep Pasture Road in its eponymous namesake town on the site of an earlier facility built in 1821 that performed the same purpose.

It is known as the Nassakeag, or South Setauket, Schoolhouse.

The area offered an altogether different educational approach than modern institutions do because of the region's substantially lower population.

From five to fifteen years old, the roughly thirty students who resided there shared one room. It was as sexually segregated as a tiny, one-room structure was capable of being, with guys entering through the right door and girls doing so by the left, with each group sitting on its own side.

There were coats, hat, pails, and cup hooks in each foyer. A single burner provided heat, while a single teacher taught all grade levels. Paper notebooks and erasable slates were both used by the students.

The three "r's" of reading, writing, and math were part of the curriculum.

The rural setting of the school mandated its seasonal sessions, which included those in the summer and winter while spring and fall were set aside for family life, when pupils were required for the crucial planting and harvesting, respectively, as well as the complete range of other farm tasks.

The building fell into disrepair after the 1910 consolidation of the Setauket school districts, but 46 years later it was purchased by The Museums of Stony Brook and relocated to its campus.

Periodically, classes are held in the schoolhouse by museum educators.

A fountain and horse trough are located in front of it. It is a piece of Beaux Arts stone and marble work that was donated to New York City in 1880 by philanthropist Olivia Egleston Phelps Stokes and was initially situated at the intersection of Madison Avenue and 23rd Street.

Water for drinking was available for both people and horses from the 20-ton building. But when the vehicle was made it obsolete, it was disassembled and bought by the Long Island Museum in 1957. It is currently situated adjacent to a herb garden and is operational.

The Smith-Rudyard Burial Ground, which is still located on its original site and has headstones dating from 1796 to 1865, and a museum building with two galleries that regularly host exhibitions exhibiting American art and history are two more campus attractions.

The Long Island Museum's most recent exhibit, "Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light," was the first of its type.

According to the museum's website, Louis C.

Tiffany was "captivated by the interplay of light and color as a painter, and this obsession found its most stunning expression in his glass paintings."

"Tiffany Studios produced leaded-glass windows and lampshades in vivid colors and richly diversified patterns, textures, and opacities using new and inventive techniques and materials."

The Long Island Museum provides a glimpse into rural, 19th-century existence and inspires analysis and reassessments of the present.