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Owners of Greenport’s 19th century ‘shucker shacks’ seek historic designation

Residents of Greenport’s historic Sandy Beach waterfront community, on the western edge of Youngs Point, want the Village Board to designate the former  scallop shucking enclave as a historic district.

19th century scallop shucker shacks on Beach St. in Sandy Beach, Greenport. (Credit: Chris Francescani/Sunset Beach Films)

Earlier this week, the Greenport Historic Preservation Commission voted to recommend that the village board make the designation, following an appeal made by Sandy Beach resident Joe Corso at the Board of Trustees’ Sept. 20 meeting.

“Some of these scallop shacks go back over 150 years, and they’re now primarily summer residences,” Mr. Corso told board members. “There is so much history there. Almost every home has pictures going back to when photography was just becoming a common thing in homes.”

Designating Sandy Beach a historic district, Mr. Corso added, would protect the character of the community and maintain a  property owner’s right to rebuild if a flood or a fire destroys one of the shacks. In addition, he said, the designation could bring potential tax benefits  if the area could also be placed on the National Historic Registry.

Local historian Robert Harper also addressed the board, calling Sandy Beach is a “very, very, very special place” that deserves historic designation. 

Mr. Harper, who is not part of the Sandy Beach campaign, but was advising Mr. Corso, told the board last month that he was “absolutely blown away” by Sandy Beach.

“I had no idea it existed,” he said. “It’s kind of this secret little paradise that you have to go this way and that way to get to. I also started doing some research about these types of shucking shacks” — which he said were also used processing fish and making oil.

“I think this may be the only intact example of a little kind of enclave that has these wonderful little shacks,” Mr, Harper said. “This is a maritime community, which makes these so important, and to lose even one of them, I think, would be tragic.”

At last Wednesday’s Historic Preservation Commission meeting,  members discussed the historic significance of Sandy Beach, based on a 2020 Reconnaissance Level Historical Resources Survey commissioned by Greenport village officials.

“Captain James Monroe Munsell was a leader in the region’s oyster area in the 1880s,” according to the survey. “Munsell planted seed oysters and, in order to cultivate them at maturity, a process that greatly economized the oyster trade, Munsell founded his own company, the Green Ford Oyster Company. By 1908 about 30 oyster companies operated in the area. At some point during the industrialization of the industry, the shellfish shacks along Beach Street — which was then called Youngs Point and later renamed Sandy Beach — fell out of use, as most industrial processing plants appeared in and around Greenport, and these shacks later became seasonal residences.”

The narrative notes that, “the industry continued to grow in value until its peak around 1930, when oyster beds occupied over 270,000 acres in and around Peconic Bay. At that time, the annual catch of mature oysters reached well over two million, and the booming industry and the associated employment opportunities attracted new residents to Greenport.”

The survey reports that “the first evidence of commercial scalloping on the North Fork of Long Island comes from newspaper accounts of local people observing a boat from Connecticut harvesting scallops just northeast of Robins Island.”

Former scallop shucker shacks along Beach Street in Greenport (Credit: Chris Francescani/Sunset Beach Films)

“By 1873 commercial scalloping was local, and scallop shops began to appear,” it continues. “This small peninsula of land is located at the entrance of Sterling Basin, at the southernmost point of the village. Along Beach [Street], former scallop shops were located on this site, but around 1886 local residents turned the area into a summer resort, and the former shacks were cleaned out and converted into bungalows.”

Finally, the survey notes, “a historic building inventory form on file at the State Historic Preservation Office lists a building at 24 Beach [St.] as constructed in 1872 and as being the last shellfish shucker’s shack on Long Island.”

At last month’s Village Board meeting, Mr. Corso told the trustees that the Sandy Beach Homeowner’s Association met twice during the summer to discuss  a historic district designation, and held a vote just before Labor Day.

Mr. Corso said that 20 homeowners supported such a  designation, he said,  five opposed it, and three failed to respond.