The Hallock Family Homestead and Museum is believed to be the oldest structure in the north-shore hamlet of Rocky Point, in Suffolk County, Long Island. According to Brookhaven architect and historian David Griffin:
“The Hallock family purchased the land to build their somewhat lavish home in 1720. The two-story house is a splendid piece of English neoclassical Georgian architecture. Balance and symmetry are the key to understanding every part and parcel of its harmonious design.”
“It is Rocky Point’s oldest standing house and was the home of seven generations of the Hallock family until 1964,” reports the Rocky Point Historical Society, which acquired the property in 2013 and has gradually turned the site into a local history museum and headquarters.
Noah Hallock built his grand home in 1721 as a wedding gift for his wife Bethiah Youngs. The Hallock family had originally settled in Southold, Long Island, in 1640. Several of Noah Hallock’s descendants rebelled against the British during the American Revolution.
The Hallock Family Homestead and Museum sports several superlative historical exhibits, including a very fine needlework exhibit of original works by Frances Hallock Tuthill and Ina Miller Hallock and a collection of sculptures by Temima Gezari, a Rocky Point artist who lived to be 103 years old and died in 2009.
The Museum grounds include a well-manicured native Long Island botanical garden; and the Noah Hallock Cemetery from colonial times through the early 20th century.
The exhibit “Radio Rocky Point” gives an in-depth account of Radio Corporation of America (RCA’s) “world’s largest radio transmitting station,” which closed in 1978. It’s located nearby in what is now Rocky Point State Forest, a relatively rare New York pine barrens.
“RCA Rocky Point was the largest and most powerful radio broadcast center in the Americas,” then President of the Rocky Point Historical Society Natalie Aurucci-Stiefel told me during a visit several years ago. Aurucci-Stiefel has written about Hallock family genealogical, RCA Rocky Point and more.
The site began operating in the early 1920s until the advent of orbiting satellites she said.
“But, while it was up and running, RCA Rocky Point was a true marvel of electrical broadcast engineering and design,” she said. “It boasted almost countless colossal-sized radio antennas, spread out on approximately 5,000 acres of land. RCA Rocky Point’s broadcasting power for radio reached mainland Europe and South America, easily.”
“World-famous radio pioneers visited the station, such as Guglielmo Marconi, Edwin H. Armstrong, Lee DeForest, Charles P. Steinmetz and Nikola Tesla,” according to DEC. “David Sarnoff became the Director of RCA, which was at the forefront of the development of radio science.”
The current Historical Society President is Suzanne Johnson, another outstanding and dedicated local historian, the former Director of the Longwood Public Library. Johnson has done much genealogical research into old Long Island families, such as the (British) Davis family of Brookhaven Township.
Some Davis families are descendants of Faulke Davis, an infamous Welsh Puritan who arrived with Long Island’s first English settlers, in the 1630s. Faulke Davis and his wife Goody were East Hampton villagers who instigated the East Hampton Witchcraft Trial against their neighbor Goody Garlick in the mid-1600s.
(Garlick was found not guilty and Faulke Davis was eventually forced to leave East Hampton, before settling in Brookhaven Township at Coram.)
The Historical Society contributes several Long Island history educational programs for the Rocky Point School District, and is responsible for numerous historical markers throughout the Rocky Point area.
The Hallock Family Homestead and Museum is located at 172 Hallock Landing Road, in Rocky Point, Suffolk County, NY.
For more information, including, museum hours and tours, or information about the Rocky Point Historical Society, visit their website.
Illustrations, from above: Hallock Family Homestead and Museum (courtesy Natalie Aurucci Stiefel); and RCA Radio Central, circa 1950 (courtesy of the Rocky Point Historical Society).
Source link
