Historical society digitizes over a century of village heritage

The Rockville Centre Historical Society is taking an inventory of old maps, postcards, photographs, and other historical documents in the Phillips House Museum’s archives and digitizing them for future generations to access online.

Alene Scoblete initiated the effort to build a digital archival collection when she was the adult reference librarian and community archivist for the public library, where she worked for many years, to offer patrons new ways to access local history from centuries past.

Before she retired in September 2021, Scoblete agreed to work with the historical society, and with the help of some colleagues, she has spent over a year uploading old photos and documents online via New York Heritage, a digital database that categorizes historical documents from state organizations.

“Then it was just, where to start?” Scoblete said. “So I started with houses of worship. Then Debbie and Matt joined in, and have been absolutely phenomenal.”

Scoblete and historical society trustees Debbie Fehringer and Matt Cliszis have combed through dozens of files at Phillips House to determine what would be the best to scan and upload to the New York Heritage website. Once they have finished with houses of worship, they plan to move on to historic homes, the village’s first families, and communities of color.

“You always have to start with one clue,” Scoblete, who now lives in Madison, New Jersey, said via FaceTime. “And then, as Debbie says, you go down a rabbit hole, or multiple rabbit holes, as you’re researching.”

They scour newspaper archives, old telephone directories, and reference websites like Ancestry.com to get all the information they can before sharing it online. “We help organize what we have in our files,” Fehringer said, “which is sort of a hodgepodge collection of memorabilia, old newspapers, and bits of information collected from residents who lived here for a long time.”

The process is arduous and time-consuming, but Fehringer and Cliszis think of it as a “labor of love” that they are proud to be part of.

By digitizing the Phillips House archival information, Fehringer explained, they hope to provide new insight for people curious about their property, their genealogy, and the village's history. “We want to remind people that it’s still very much a part of who we are today,” Fehringer said.

The archives are on the top floor of the museum, a Victorian-style home built in 1882, over a decade before the village was incorporated. The building is named after its original owner, Samuel F. Phillips, a sea captain from Maine who lived in the house with his family and is considered one of the founders of the community.

The house was left in disrepair until the late 1970s, when it was moved from its original location on North Village Avenue to its current one at 28 Hempstead Ave., across the street from the St. Agnes Cathedral School, and restored as a museum.

Stepping inside the late-19th-century home gives museum-goers a glimpse of what life was like before the invention of modern appliances like toasters and refrigerators.

“We originally started by categorizing our kitchen implements,” Fehringer said. “We looked into all the different kitchen appliances that you don’t see anymore. Between the three of us, we found some really interesting things.”

Cliszis said he joined the historical society around 2019, after developers presented plans to demolish a 19th-century home at 220 Hempstead Ave. and replace it with five new homes.

Cliszis and nearly two dozen other residents created a grass-roots movement to head off the controversial subdivision, and although they were unsuccessful, the loss of the historic home motivated him to become more involved in preserving the village’s heritage.

After he joined the society, Cliszis decided to help with the effort to digitize the museum’s archives, with the goal of trying to attract others who might be interested in learning about the community’s history.

With Cliszis’s help, the society now has a much more significant social media presence and several interactive online features, including a digital walking tour and video interviews about the history of Rockville Centre.

“There is so much great stuff in the archives at the Phillips House, and I wanted to move forward and get it out there for more of the public to see,” Cliszis said. “We’re doing as much as we can, in strategic order, to digitize them.”

In order to get more people interested, he helped the society launch a social media campaign called Then and Now, which pairs old photos of homes and buildings, found in the archives, with current photos of those structures.

“People get enthusiastic when they see it,” Cliszis said. “I think it’s a good way to accomplish our efforts to get more people interested in our community’s history.”

To view highlights of the Rockville Centre Historical Society archives, visit RVCHS.org.