Scott Brinton

Recalling L.I. before suburbia took hold

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I grew up in Yaphank, a 14-square-mile hamlet in Suffolk County, virtually in the middle of Long Island. (The community to the north is, in fact, called Middle Island.)

I remember a weather-worn Victorian mansion beside Lower Yaphank Lake, its windowed cupola popping out of its stout, square frame like a periscope. Each day I passed the house on the school bus. Kids told ghost stories about it to scare one another.

When I was old enough, I’d ride my bike to Lower Yaphank Lake and stand at the water’s edge, fishing the day away. That house, that eerie house, stared down at my friends and me from behind a stand of tall reeds. As an adult, I learned that it was the Robert Hewlett Hawkins House, built in 1850 as the retirement residence of a successful New York City businessman, whose family had emigrated from London to Massachusetts in the early 1600s, according to the Yaphank Historical Society.

I can’t recall ever catching a fish in Lower Yaphank Lake, although I once did at Upper Yaphank Lake. Nevertheless, I told myself, I knew those waters better than anyone around.

There was a general store on the corner down the street from the Hewlett Hawkins House. It was my ritual candy stop on the way home, most often late in the day, as the sun was setting.

Yaphank is often described as “sleepy.” I’d agree. I haven’t been there since I wrote an article about it for Newsday’s Living In page in 1996, “There’s Not Much New in Yaphank, By Design.” From what I’ve read and heard, it’s changed since then, but not that much.

There’s still Main Street, full of homes dating back centuries. In fact, it was surveyed by the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities in 1972 (when I was 5) and designated the Yaphank Historic District by the State Register of Historic Places, according to the historical society.

The 2010 census put Yaphank’s population at 5,945. It was probably less than that when I was growing up, but probably not much less.

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