History, Natural History & the Arts
Humble in appearance, one-room schoolhouses might be easy to overlook, but their existence hints at a broader social, cultural, and educational history.
Hundreds of one-room school houses were built across Long Island and many still survive, either adapted to new uses or restored and open for public access. [Read more…] about Historic Schoolhouses of Long Island
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently announced the permanent protection of more than 43 acres of globally rare pine barrens owned by the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood, in the town of Islip on Long Island.
DEC acquired a conservation easement from the Sisters and will jointly manage the property with them for groundwater and habitat protection and public access to open space in an area historically under-served by parkland. [Read more…] about Sister of St. Joseph Preserve Long Island Pine Barrens Acreage
There is a map drawn on the inside cover of an old book. On its handwritten pages, the book tells the story of the earliest days of Brentwood’s schools; the schools of a hamlet in the middle of Long Island, some forty miles from New York City.
On the map we see part of the first school, an octagonal building erected among the pine barrens more than a century and a half ago. Across from it, along the fence at the edge of the school yard are three circles. Each is labeled: Abraham Lincoln, William Cullen Bryant, and J. Fennimore Cooper. What do these names mean? [Read more…] about Lincoln, Bryant, and Cooper: An Arbor Day Story
Long Island properties in Brentwood, Huntington, Kings Park, North Hempstead, Oyster Bay, Riverhead, and Smithtown are included in Preservation Long Island’s biennial list of Endangered Historic Places.
Preservation Long Island’s 2023 Endangered Historic Places List features seven nominated sites that span Long Island from a lighthouse on the Sound off Kings Point, to an early power plant in Riverhead. From historic homesteads to an expansive former mental health campus, the latest list highlights the historical richness of the region. [Read more…] about Long Island Endangered Historic Places List for 2023
If you lived in Brentwood, Long Island in the late 1960s and 70s, you may have encountered a charming, transplanted Englishman named Raymond Buckland. You many not have realized it at the time, but Buckland was in the process of establishing Wicca as a religion in America.
A private practitioner at first, introduced to Wicca by Gerald Gardner, Buckland was soon thrust into the public eye by the press. He then helped popularize Gardnerian Wicca through television appearances, newspaper interviews, and his own numerous writings on the subject. He went on to found his own museum and his own tradition of Seax Wicca. [Read more…] about Raymond Buckland and Wicca in America
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