This week in North Fork history: Greenport parking item defeated
50 years ago
Parking site issue defeated
At the special municipal election held last week, the qualified voters of the Incorporated Village of Greenport by a vote of approximately 2 to 1 defeated the proposition for a bond issue for a new parking site, we wrote in the April 27, 1962 issue of The Suffolk Times.
The vote on the proposition was as follows: 226 opposed and 104 in favor of the project. The proposed bond issue of $50,000 was for the purpose of purchasing the both the Rowland and Busso properties on the north side of Adams Street and the connecting property on South Street owned by Mrs. Ansel V. Young, we wrote.
The three pieces of real estate, which could have been purchased at a very reasonable price, would have been developed into a new parking site in the heart of the business section on Front Street, we wrote.
Postscript: Any Greenport historians know if these houses still stand? Let us know.
15 years ago
The prom must go on
The theft from a school locker of $525 raised by the Southold High School Class of ’98 for its junior prom is the sort of thing you hate to see in a small town, wrote reporter Tim Wacker in the may 1, 1997 issue of The Suffolk Times. How the money got replaced last week is the kind of thing you only see in a small town.
The cash and check were being held in a cookie tin inside a locker with no lock when they disappeared, he wrote. The tin later reappeared in the boy’s locker room, sans cash.
“A bunch of kids were hurt and angry,” said Southold biology teacher Jim Baglivi.
The Sea Shell Restaurant in Southold, Colonial Drugs in Greenport and Albertson Marine in Southold all agreed to contribute so the students could recover the lost funds.
20 years ago
Erase ‘Southold Savings;’ It’s all North Fork now
Southold Savings Bank passed from the scene in the final week of April 1992, we wrote in the April 30 issue that year.
The board of directors for North Fork Bancorp voted unanimously April 28, 1992 to merge North Fork Bank and Southold Savings Bank, a move they said at the time would lead to $4 million in annual savings thanks to the elimination of duplicate operational costs.
The move also led to the closure of six bank buildings, we wrote.
25 years ago
Facelift eyed for home of ‘Old Crocks’
A favorite subject of artists and photographers is the little wooden shack standing on pilings on the shore of the Orient harbor, just east of Orient Causeway. But a growing number of people fear the shack is steadily going from picturesque to dilapidated, we wrote in the April 30, 1987 issue of The Suffolk Times.
“Not true,” said owners John and Beverly Lomas. They say they have every intention of preserving that symbol of the North Fork’s undeveloped waterfront, we wrote. “We intend to fix it up again — we’re not going to let it go to pieces.”
Mr. Lomas’ uncle, Ezra Young, moved the shack to its waterfront location in the late 1930s, we wrote. It was originally one of the outbuildings from the Mount Pleasant Hotel, Mr. Lomas told us. Mr. Young, a former attorney, used the shack to hold parties for a group of old cronies known as “The Old Crabs” or “The Old Crocks.”
70 years ago
22,000 men register for 45-64 draft
More than 22,000 male residents of Suffolk County, aged 45 to 64 years old, signed up for whatever non-military duty their country may require of them in the fourth selective service registration we wrote in the April 30, 1942 issue of the County Review.
About 2,500 of those men were from the North Fork, we wrote.
75 years ago
100-year-old ship medicine book found
A rare relic of the old whaling ship days, which is a medical book, was brought to the Suffolk Times office recently by Harry Geehreng of Greenport, we wrote in the April 29, 1937 issue of The Suffolk Times.
The book, an old fashioned notebook, was written by Dr. E.E.D. Skinner of Greenport, father of the late Dr. Barton D. Skinnerand grandfather of Mrs. D. Stanley Corwin, we wrote.
It contains hand-written directions for use of the captain of the whaling ship Roanoke. The book is titled “Directions for the Use of the Medicines Contained in the Medicine Chest of the Ship Roanoke,” dated July 1836.
The author writes: “In the preparation of a book of this kind, it has been the intention of the compiler to offer as much good advice in a concise manner, in relation to the general diseases that the isolated sea wanderer is liable to incur, and to furnish the chest with as much medicine as he thinks would be necessarily without filling it with surplus articles.”
100 years ago
A stray bullet
Thomas Hassett of Greenport imagined he was in a Western country Tuesday when he heard a bullet whiz by his head as he was working in his yard, we reported in the May 4, 1912 issue of The Suffolk Times.
Investigation found it to be a boy who said he was trying to hit a tin can, we wrote. Officer Howard promptly removed the boy of his gun and ammunition.
