Mickey Quinn and St John the Baptist High School

It’s the early 70s in West Islip and St John the Baptist High School is gearing up for a crucial game against St. Agnes of Rockville Centre. But for freshman […]

Francis “Two-Gun” Crowley

Over the span of a few short months in 1931, 19-year old Francis Crowley was on the minds of everyone from the Bronx out to Long Island. Known for always […]

The Long Island Archaeologist

Allison McGovern has been digging history for a long time. Fascinated as a child with ancient Egypt and visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she went on to become […]

The Plum Island That Time Forgot

Plum Island is poised between its past and its future. Looking back, it contains evidence of its time as a coastal defense in the Spanish-American War, as well as a […]

Baseball in Riverhead

A July night at Riverhead Stadium in 1950. Two baseball legends face each other without even realizing it. Satchel Paige, fabled Negro League pitcher, is on the mound for the […]

The Synagogues of Long Island

Brad Kolodny spent four years documenting every synagogue in Nassau and Suffolk Counties that he could find. The result is his comprehensive coffee table book from Segula Publishing. On today’s […]

Preservation Awards: Oakdale Historical Society

Maryann Almes, president of the Oakdale Historical Society, joins us to discuss the organization’s role in preserving and celebrating the history of Oakdale. Located in Islip on the south shore […]

Preservation Awards: The Fordham Mill

The Fordham Mill (also known as the Tuttle-Fordham Mill or the Brick Mill) in Remsenburg was a local landmark long before it caught the eye of John Kanas. Growing up […]

Preservation Awards: Babylon’s Oak Beach Life- Saving Station

Welcome back to the awards ceremony. Today we hit the beach to talk to Mary Cascone, Babylon Town Historian, about the Oak Beach Life-Saving Station. Perched between the Great South […]

Preservation Awards: Sea Cliff Firehouse

The preservation awards ceremony continues! Today we speak with Erinn McDonnell of the village of Sea Cliff in Nassau County. Erinn managed the restoration of their 1931, Tudor revival-style firehouse […]

Preservation Awards: SANS Sag Harbor

It’s a preservation party and you’re all invited! We’ve teamed up with Preservation Long Island to help celebrate their 2020 Preservation Awards. Over the next week we’ll be posting interviews […]

Where Old New York State Newspapers Live On

Our sojourn through the hallowed pages of the Suffolk County News from 1920 hit a speedbump this week when it turned out that no digital copy was available online. To […]

Suffolk County News, May 14, 1920

We wade once again into the cool stream of the digital past to fish for items from the Suffolk County News of 1920. Today is Friday, May 14th in the […]

Suffolk County News, May 7, 1920

If this is Friday, than it must be 1920! We continue mining the seam of digitzed microfilm out of the New York State Historic Newspapers site, looking at the Suffolk […]

We Were the Whalers

We return today to the sea to consider the whale. More specifically, we talk with Brenna McCormick-Thompson of the Whaling Museum and Education Center in Cold Spring Harbor. Brenna is […]

Suffolk County News, April 30, 1920

If it’s Friday and we’re still in self-isolation, then this is another edition of the Suffolk County News, give or take one hundred years. We’re reading through the newspaper as […]

Suffolk County News, April 23, 1920

The latest edition of last century’s Suffolk County News is here, for April 23rd, 1920. We continue easing our home isolation by reading what was going on in our region […]

Suffolk County News, April 16, 1920

We continue our trek through the local news of a century gone by. Today we read the Suffolk County News from April 16, 1920. We find stories of bootleggers, war-torn […]

Long Island Freemasons

The Freemasons have been with us since the beginning of our country. And no, they do not have secret repositories of hidden gold. They do have a long history of […]

Suffolk County News, April 9, 1920

We continue our journey through the past, reading our way through the Suffolk County News of one hundred years ago. Today we cover Friday, April 9, 1920. Cars are quickly […]

Suffolk County News, April 2, 1920

We’re using our home isolation to look back – reading issues of the Suffolk County News of 1920 week by week. For April 2, 1920: Al Smith, Fatty Arbuckle, and a cow […]

A Light in the Undark

Today our guest, Erin Elizabeth Becker, recounts the story of her great grandmother, Marion Murdoch O’Hara, who worked for the US Radium Corporation in New York City. Through genealogical and […]

The LaGrange Inn on Higbie Lane

The LaGrange Inn was a storied stopping point along Montauk Highway from the 1700s when it opened for business with a Higbie at the helm. It remained a local landmark, […]

Still There on Christian Avenue

History is not the full story if not everyone gets to tell it. And in places where the traditional records are scarce or silent, where do you look for answers? […]

The Noble Experiment

America tried something new from 1920 to 1933: outlawing the production, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors. In that same spirit of social experimentation, we made this episode something new. […]

Visiting Brentwood, Revisiting the Revolution

We take a look back at the Revolutionary War on Long Island, courtesy of the Brentwood Public Library and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Peter Ward, the library’s […]

The Amazing Ludlows of Islip

Join Islip Town Historian George Munkenbeck as he reveals the lives and times of this family and, by extension, the social and political climate of late 19th and early 20th […]

Walt Whitman: Straight out of Paumanok

Two hundred years ago, the man who broke American poetry wide open was born in West Hills, Long Island. His house remains a shrine and place of pilgrimage for fans […]