Hometown history
Historical Museum tells story of how life used to be
As you enter the quaint building in the heart of Baldwin, it’s difficult to decide what to look at first. But once you start walking around the Baldwin Historical Museum, you soon realize that there isn’t a bad place to start your journey through the community’s 350-plus years of history.
Although the museum, which opened in 1976, isn’t very large, the walls and floors are packed with displays dating back centuries. There’s a bicycle mounted on a wall that once belonged to Dr. William Steele, for whom Steele Elementary School is named. There are aerial photos of the community from 1919, and a large quilt that locals sewed and unveiled in 1975.
As you continue looking through the museum, which is off Grand Avenue, between Seaman Avenue and Laurel Court, you begin to discover smaller details about what life was like for Baldwinites decades and centuries ago. For starters, “Baldwin” has only been around since 1891. It had several other names, dating back to 1640, when John Hicks and Edward Spragg first settled in Hick’s Neck (now known as Baldwin Harbor).
As the nation was gearing up for its bicentennial in 1976, historical societies grew more popular. The Baldwin Historical Society was founded in 1972, and, after securing approval from Nassau County to build a museum on county land, the Baldwin Historical Museum opened four years later.
New life for museum
When Gary Farkash moved to Baldwin in 2007, the museum wasn’t open to the public — it had been closed around 2001. But since Farkash lived a few hundred feet from the site and because he loved history, he was always interested in seeing what was inside. So, when a tree lighting ceremony was held outside the building in 2012, Farkash walked over, and noticed that the museum’s door was slightly open. It was then that he met Jack Bryck, the historical society’s former president, and joined the organization on the spot. “I couldn’t throw the check at him fast enough,” he recalled.
