The BELLPORT - BROOKHAVEN HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S

2013 Events

Postcards - Jeff Weinstein

SUNDAY JUNE 16 4PM
SUMMER LECTURE SERIES

Postcard collector Jeff Weinstein to explore the startling enthusiasm for picture postcards in the early 1900s at lecture on Sunday, June 16 at 4 pm

"Wish You Were Here: The Golden Age of the Picture Postcard" the Summer Lecture Series at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society

Can tweets, texts, and email save the post office? Congress has been going postal about the U.S. Postal Service, on the one hand not wanting to spend to keep it going, on the other not willing to scotch that expensive Saturday delivery. Yet there was a time when a similar absurd idea really did work: More than a century ago, the tweetlike penny picture-postcard, enemy to the ostensibly profitable two-cent letter, brought struggling postal services worldwide into the black.

Jeff Weinstein, cultural critic and postcard collector who has written about food,arts, and style for the Village Voice, the New Yorker, and dozens of newspapers, magazines, and online publications, will show and discuss more than 200 examples from his own stash – 2000 – of beautiful, informative, and truly odd vintage picture postcards in "Wish You Were Here: The Golden Age of the Picture Postcard" at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 16, at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, 12 Bell Street, Bellport, N.Y.

"Wish You Were Here" follows the turn-of-the-last-century theme of the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society’s 2013 exhibition, "Bellport: Summer 1900," on view Fridays and Saturdays from June 13 to July 27, 11 am – 4 pm.

The so-called Golden Age of the picture postcard ranges from 1905 until the beginning or World War I. The collecting and mailing of penny cards was one of the first popular-culture "crazes."

Why a craze? In 1905, over seven billion postcards -- yes, a billion with a B -- were mailed internationally, with almost one billion just in the U.S. About half the cards produced in that period were bought not to be mailed, but to be pasted in collector’s albums. So the one billion is doubled.

By 1905, a young and aggressive Eastman Kodak company made photo paper in postcard shape, so backyard family photos could be sent everywhere. German-made chromolithograph view cards of everything from everywhere were lusciously colored. Hastily shot and mailed photo-news cards showed industrial strikes and first views of the San Francisco quake. Theme and novelty cards were gooey, saucy or slightly insane.

Few could resist this thoroughly modern eye candy, and a craze was born.

Admission is $15; $50 for the four-part BBHS June series of presentations.

For reservations please call: 631-776-7640
For more information see: bbhsmuseum.org
BBHS – 12 Bell Street, Bellport, NY 11713

Gardens - Tovah Martin

SATURDAY JUNE 22 11AM
SUMMER LECTURE SERIES

Celebrated garden writer Tovah Martin will talk about horticultural preservation and how gardeners grapple with change on Saturday, June 22 at 11 am.

"Trowels & Tomorrow: Garden Stewardship" the second in the Summer Lecture Series at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, a joint presentation with the Bellport Garden Club

The beauty of gardens is that they mature. But how do you meet the challenge of bringing yesterday’s landscape or garden into the next generation?

Tovah Martin, horticulturist, author and lecturer explores issues and provides answers about garden stewardship in "Trowels & Tomorrow" at 11 am, Saturday, June 22, at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, 12 Bell Street, Bellport, NY.

"Trowels & Tomorrow" serves the turn-of-the-last-century theme of the Bellport- Brookhaven Historical Society’s 2013 exhibition, "Bellport: Summer 1900" by exploring ways to preserve aspects of the past now and into the future. The exhibition will be on view Fridays and Saturdays from June 13 to July 27.

Whether you have inherited a landscape or created a garden over decades and now face mature trees and shrubs that require preemptive pruning or relocation, solutions will be explored. Taking us through woodland gardens and grand estates, or exploring gardens great and small, she will tackle such difficult problems as rehabilitating overgrown boxwood hedges and coping with plants that were once considered exotics but have now been unmasked as invasives. And she will also talk about plant preservation and heirloom varieties, honoring the people who have worked to preserve vintage ornamentals so those plants with a past can become the superstars of future gardens.

Tovah Martin has published more than a dozen books on gardening and writes frequently about her gardening successes and foibles for magazines including Country Gardens, Traditional Home, Martha Stewart Living, House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens, Connecticut Cottages & Gardens, Horticulture, and This Old House Magazine, as well as many other publications. In other media, you can follow her blog at www.plantswise.com or on Facebook at Plantswise by Tovah Martin, or watch Tovah in action on television – she has appeared most recently on the CBS Sunday Early Show and the Martha Stewart Show as well as many other broadcasts including the PBS television gardening series "Cultivating Life," where she served as editorial producer.

Admission is $15; $50 for the four-part BBHS June series of presentations.

For reservations please call: 631-776-7640
For more information see: bbhsmuseum.org
BBHS – 12 Bell Street, Bellport, NY 11713



Tovah Martin



Historic Garden, from Tovah Martin’s Website

Pop music - Alan Levenstein

SUNDAY JUNE 23 4PM
SUMMER LECTURE SERIES

Alan Levenstein, expert on American musicals, to explore the passion for popular music in the early 1900s on Sunday, June 23 at 4 pm.

"And the Band Played On" the third in the Summer Lecture Series at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society

"Imagine a state funeral without airs, a pass in review without martial music, a wedding without the wedding march, a church without hymns. It is the music that binds the moment to the soul, that fixes that special memory in our minds, that soothes the pain of a loss, that fills the air with electricity you can feel, that turns doubt into determination, failure into success. It is because of all this and more that our society and our military have merged the sound of music with the triumphs and tribulations of life." -- Peter Gammond, editor, The Oxford Companion to Popular Music, 1991

At the turn of the 20th century popular music was everywhere. It was on the stage, in musical shows and operettas by George M. Cohan and Victor Herbert. It was on village bandstands, with local bands inspired by the success of John Philip Sousa. It was in the parlor – parlor piano sales hit an all-time high in 1909 – where families gathered to sing "Home Sweet Home" and "Oh Promise Me." And at every seaside resort, including Bellport, "By the Beautiful Sea" provided an accompaniment to summer fun.

In "And the Band Played On," Alan Levenstein, Columbia University instructor and founder of The American Musical Project at the New-York Historical Society, will use historic and modern recordings, archival sheet music and an anecdotal history of the splendid years of 1895-1914 to provide a sense of the beautiful, musical life of those golden years when the last century was young and everyone thought the dance would go on forever at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 23, at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, 12 Bell Street, Bellport, NY.

"And the Band Played On" follows the turn-of-the-last-century theme of the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society’s 2013 exhibition, "Bellport: Summer 1900," on view Fridays and Saturdays from June 13 to July 27, 11 a.m. until 4 p.m.

Admission is $15; $50 for the four-part BBHS June series of presentations.
For reservations please call: 631-776-7650
For more information see: bbhsmuseum.org
BBHS – 12 Bell Street, Bellport, NY 11713



1911



1914



1902



1895



1911



1914



1907



1908

Old Inlet - Thomas Schu

SUNDAY JUNE 30 4PM
SUMMER LECTURE SERIES

Bay sailor and local history detective Thomas V. Schultz to discuss the past and present of "Old Inlet," the Bellport destination beach, Sunday, June 30 at 4 p.m.

"Sailing to Old Inlet: Then and Now," the fourth in the Summer Lecture Series at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society

Devastating tropical storm Sandy opened a channel through Fire Island between Bellport Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. But this is nothing new. Breaches or inlets connecting the bay to the ocean have opened and closed countless times since the formation of Fire Island some 21,000 years ago. A major breach known as Smith's Inlet, near what’s now called Old Inlet, was used by the British Navy during the Revolutionary War as a way to ship goods and ammunition to British forces fighting the Continental Army.

The access to the Atlantic that Smith’s Inlet provided played a major role in the founding of the village of Bellport.

On Sunday, June 30, Thomas V. Schultz, executive director of Bellport’s Gallery 125 and seasoned bay sailor, will talk about Old Inlet’s summer-resort appeal at the turn of the last century, with its boats, swimmers, and day-trippers – as well as the history of the breach at Old Inlet and the current state of the breach today. "Sailing to Old Inlet: Then and Now" can be heard at 4 p.m. at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, 12 Bell Street, Bellport, N.Y.

"Sailing to Old Inlet: Then and Now" continues the turn-of-the-last-century theme of the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society’s 2013 exhibition, "Bellport: Summer 1900," on view Fridays and Saturdays from June 13 to July 27.

Geological surveys published in the mid-1800s show that Smith's Inlet had closed. Yet the area continued to be a vacation destination for people living along the bay. In the early 1900s, the Old Inlet Club was founded. Ferries took artists, writers, and wealthy socialites from New York City to its peaceful, pristine beaches. Bellporters harvested the water’s salt hay and shellfish.

For the last 160 years, the Old Inlet area looked the way it did after Smith's Inlet closed -- until October 29, 2012, when the ocean surge created by Sandy created a new breach where the Old Inlet Club once stood. Sandy uncovered pieces of the past, including remnants of the resort club as well as the skeleton of the Bessie White, a schooner that came ashore in the early 1900s.

Through historical images, maps, and personal accounts, Schultz will illuminate the newsworthy Old Inlet story.

Admission is $15; $50 for the four-part BBHS June series of presentations.
For reservations please call: 631-776-7650
For more information see: bbhsmuseum.org
BBHS – 12 Bell Street, Bellport, NY 11713



Segment of Brookhaven Town map prepared by Surveyor Issac Hulse 1797, showing the Great South Bay and the Old Inlet



Segment of Brookhaven Town map prepared by Surveyor Issac Hulse 1797, showing the Great South Bay and the Old Inlet