Bayport Blue Point Heritage Association: March 2020

Sunday, March 1, 2020

March 2020 Newsletter

General Membership meeting

* Please note special time of 12 noon to 2:00 PM.

They Called It Red Gold:

The Long Island Cranberry Industry

Sunday, March 8, 12-2pm at the BBP Library

Long Island was once home to a thriving cranberry industry, including our own local bog at Sans Souci Lakes. Please join us as we welcome naturalist John Turner who will discuss this once prosperous agricultural tradition, how cranberry farms were created, and what brought about their demise. All are welcome to attend.

St. Patrick's Day Parade...

On Sunday March 15th at 11:00, Bayport and Blue Point will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day with our annual parade. This is the 30th year for this festive outing. This year the Grand Marshal will be Matthew "Matty" McGuire. If you would like to march with the BBPHA, please contact us! Information can be found below. We look forward to celebrating our wonderful communities and thank the Bayport-Blue Point Chamber of Commerce for their dedication to this annual event!

Help wanted....

House Tour: It is never too early to start planning our Annual House Tour. The planned tour for this year will be on October 25th. If you have a historic house in the Bayport or Blue Point community or a home that has architectural significance or charm, please contact us! We would love to showcase your home in our tour to share the history of our communities. We also need help with planning and promotion. There is a small group forming now to actively secure homes. Please consider joining. If you have some time to give back to your community, in any way, shape or form, WE NEED YOU!

Docents: From June through October tours of the historic Meadow Croft home are given every weekend by our small group of dedicated docents. We are always looking for new names and faces to led our tours. If you are interested, contact us below. Training provided.

Heirloom Garden: Who has a green thumb? Ok, not necessary but volunteering to help with Meadow Croft's Heirloom Garden will make your heart full and maybe turn your brown thumb green! All levels of experience needed. Join the fun!

Five-Mile Look

A new feature in the monthly newsletter. These short articles were first printed in the monthly Bayport Blue Point Gazette. They were written by Gene Horton and reprinted with permission.
This imposing summer hotel and restaurant stood at the foot of Blue Point Avenue, to the west of the town fishing dock. The remains of the old decorative wall can still be seen along Blue Point Ave. and the property today. Originally begun as "The Coop" by Frank Avery in 1912 when he moved a chicken coop by scow from Commodore Bourne's Estate in Oakdale (the former LaSalle Academy now St. John's University campus) to this site. In 1913, after Mr. Avery's untimely death in a horrible automobile accident, his widow, Matilda Avery, had the Five-Mile Look built. The hotel had forty guest rooms and its spacious dining room porch was beautifully decorated as an arbor shelter. The hotel got its name because Fire Island is five miles across the Great South Bay from Blue Point. Five-Mile Look featured shore dinners on its menu and specialized in serving Blue Point oysters.

The well-known artist of the Ashcan School, William F. Glackens (1870-1938) centered some of his paintings around Five-Mile Look and Blue Point shoreline: "Beach Umbrellas at Blue Point" (1915) owned by the Smithsonian Institution today and "The Beach at Blue Point" (1915) in Rochester, NY, Museum of Fine Art. In 1996, Christie's Auction House in NYC sold a Glackens work entitled "Town Pier - Blue Point" for $1.04 million. In April, 1939, before the summer season began, Five-Mile Look was totally destroyed by a fire of "undetermined origin." Only the ruins of the decorative wall & fountain remain in silent testimony on the property which today is designated as a NY State Wetlands preserve.