Your 1975 Long Island Champion Babylon Panthers

March 10, 2025
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Tom McKeown with his book This is Panther Country: A Memoir of Youth, Underdog Spirit, and Basketball Glory.

Tom McKeown lived and breathed basketball throughout junior and senior high school in Babylon. As an eighth grader in 1974-1975, he got to experience the thrill of watching the varsity […]

Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics w Mark Torres

January 20, 2025
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Newspaper clipping with a black and white photograph of a man with a trim goatee.
Dr. Charles Davenport. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sep 5, 1930.

The science of genetics took a wrong turn in the early 20th century and it ran through Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Here overlooking a former whaling port, Dr. Charles […]

Whatever Happened to Walt Whitman’s Brain?

October 21, 2024
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Brain from "Tertia pagina figurarum capitalium." New York Public Library Digital Collections.

The science of the brain was changing throughout the 19th century. Medical researchers were peering ever deeper into cerebral mysteries and one question piqued their interest more than any other: […]

Promoting Long Island: The Art of Edward Lange, 1870-1889

October 7, 2024
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Book cover with a painting of a 19th century ship at dock.
Promoting Long Island: The Art of Edward Lange, 1870-1889.

Edward Lange was a German artist who started his career on Long Island in the late 19th century. He meticulously captured the landscape and built environment across the island from […]

The Association of Public Historians of New York State

September 18, 2024
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Multicolored map of New York State from 1845.
1845 NYS Pincus Map. NYPL Digital Collections 1845 Pincus Map. NYPL Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-efd8-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

The Association of Public Historians of New York State held their annual conference at Danfords Hotel in Port Jefferson this year, gathering public historians from all corners of the state […]

Chubby Jackson, Jazz, and Freeport

May 1, 2024
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Group of five men, four in suits and ties, one in a print shirt with ducks.
From l: Dave Lambert, John Simmons, Chubby Jackson, George Handy, and Dizzy Gillespie. William P. Gottlieb Collection, LOC.

Greig Stewart “Chubby” Jackson was a swinging sensation in his day. A child of vaudevillians, he was raised in an enclave of actors, musicians, and performers in Freeport, Long Island […]

Washington’s Commando Benjamin Tallmadge with Richard Welch

April 15, 2024
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Illustration of Benjamin Tallmadge in front of one of his handwritten letters.
Lt. Col. Tallmadge of the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons.

The Long Island-born, Yale-educated Benjamin Tallmadge seized his moment to shine in the American Revolution. Whether fighting the British on horseback with the 2nd Continental Dragoons or uncovering their secrets […]

The Howard School in Kings Park with Dr Tammy C. Owens

March 27, 2024
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A group of Black girls working in a kitchen.
Girls at the Howard Orphanage and Industrial School learning to bake. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL.

Dr. Tammy C. Owens of Skidmore College joins us to discuss her 2019 article “Fugitive Literati: Black Girls’ Writing as a Tool of Kinship and Power at the Howard School.” […]

In Levittown’s Shadow with Tim Keogh

February 5, 2024
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Cover of In Levittown's Shadow by Tim Keogh.
In Levittown's Shadow by Tim Keogh from University of Chicago Press.

While Long Island developed a reputation for affluence throughout the 20th Century, there has always been a parallel history of the everyday workers and servants who toiled in the shadow […]

Long Island Loyalists with Brendon Burns

January 19, 2024
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18th century wooden ships in New York harbor.
Disembarkation of the Troops at Gravesend Bay under the Command of General Collier, R.N. (August 22, 1776). Bequest of Charles Allen Munn, 1924

No one sheds a tear for the British Loyalists of Long Island, those inhabitants who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution. But genealogist Brendon Burns has spent […]

Long Island’s Endangered Historic Places

December 12, 2023
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Three story lighthouse made of red brick sitting on an outcrop of black rock surrounded by water.
The Stepping Stones Lighthouse in Long Island Sound. Photo by Robert Lincoln.

Every other year, Preservation Long Island compiles a list of historic places on Long Island that are endangered. Each list is a mix of structures from different periods of time, […]

The Our Hamptons Podcast

October 9, 2023
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Row of people in 1930s bathing suits on a beach.
East Hampton Beach. Genthe photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Your idea of the Hamptons on the East End of Long Island may include images of supersized mansions and extravagant parties, but there is an older, richer Hamptons history beneath […]

Edward Lieberman’s Historic Tours

August 16, 2023
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Detail of a 1914 map showing a bridge across a harbor.
Detail of Bayville from the Belcher-Hyde 1914 Atlas of Nassau County. NYPL Digital Collections

Yes, Edward Lieberman is a former assistant district attorney in Nassau County and the former mayor of Seacliff but just as importantly, he is a long-time listener of the Long […]

How the Bayport Blue Point Phantoms Got Their Name

May 30, 2023
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The word Phantoms written in white inside a white outline shaped like a ghost.
Contemporary logo of the BBP Phantoms.

Today we team up with Stephanie Eberhard-Holgerson’s journalism class at Bayport Blue Point (BBP) High School to try to solve a mystery. At the suggestion of BBP’s librarian Pam Gustafson, […]

Redeeming Al Smith

May 1, 2023
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Bain News Service photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Al Smith was many things during his political career: reform champion after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, four-time governor of New York State, the first Catholic presidential candidate. But he was […]

Raymond Buckland and Wicca in Brentwood

January 9, 2023
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Flyer advertising the Buckland Museum in black and red ink.
Flyer for the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick from the Brentwood Public Library.

If you lived in Brentwood 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 […]

Cleaning Up After the Hurricane of 1938

December 5, 2022
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Black and white photospread of pictures showing damaged streets and houses from the Hurricane of 1938.
Scenes of hurricane damage. East Hampton Star, Sep 29, 1938.

Much has been written about September 21, 1938, the day that a massive hurricane hit Long Island. For Jonathan C. Bergman, the more interesting story began the day after. His […]

Returning to the Culper Spy Ring

October 25, 2022
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Detail of sepia-toned map image of the north shore of Long Island showing Setauket and, to the east, Wading River.
Setauket and surrounding areas circa 1780. https://lccn.loc.gov/73691554

Today we dive back into a discussion of the Culper Spy Ring, turning our attention to the area of Port Jefferson or, more appropriately, its original incarnation of Drowned Meadow. […]

William Sidney Mount and Long Island People of Color

September 12, 2022
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William Sidney Mount (l) and The Bone Player (1856) featuring Andrew Brewster.
William Sidney Mount (l) and The Bone Player (1856) featuring Andrew Brewster.

William Sidney Mount was known for his keenly-observed portraits and scenes of everyday life on Long Island during the first half of the 19th century. He portrayed farmers, fiddlers, tradesmen, […]

Long Island Beach

June 15, 2022
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Overhead photo showing the Whitewater River with bathers in the water and on a beach in the background.
Long Island Beach on the Whitewater River in Ohio. Photo courtesy of Sharon Pope Lutz.

We continue our exploration of Long Islands other than our own. This episode takes us inland from the East Coast to the banks of the Whitewater River in western Ohio. […]

Square Dancing and the Durlachers

April 6, 2022
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Black and white photo of a crowd dancing at the Jones Beach Bandshell some time in the 1960s.
Ed Durlacher calling a square dance at Jones Beach. Image courtesy of Glenn Durlacher.

Glenn Durlacher looks back over his family’s legacy of square dance calling on Long Island with deserved pride. His grandfather Ed pioneered square dancing in the New York City area […]

Marguerite Kearns and an Unfinished Revolution

March 21, 2022
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Edna Kearns, in a long white dress, sits at a cluttered desk looking at the camera with a candlestick phone in front of her.
Edna Kearns (circa 1915). Image courtesy of Marguerite Kearns used under a CC BY -SA 3.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In 2020 we marked the centennial of woman suffrage and the passing of the 19th amendment. Although the intervening 102 years can make that struggle feel like the distant past, […]

Cold War Long Island

January 18, 2022
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The cover of the book Cold War Long Island.
Christopher Verga and Karl Grossman document life on Long Island during the Cold War years.

Journalist Karl Grossman and historian Christopher Verga have teamed up for the new book Cold War Long Island, out now from the History Press. In it, they detail the productive […]