Historic Home Spotlight: 564 Middle Road Bayport NY
Gladly researched and written by John Amato.
Did
Bayport ever have an ice cream shop? Why, yes it did. The house
currently located at 564 Middle Road was once the locally famous Weeks
Ice Cream shop and later became the Rogers Ice Cream shop. Both
businesses made and provided ice cream to the local summer hotels,
restaurants and families in Bayport, Blue Point, Sayville and Patchogue.
The Rogers company shipped their ice cream by train along the east
coast.
The house, just west of Bayport Avenue on
the south side of Middle Road at the corner of Morgan Lane, has had a
varied and interesting past. This little house began as a residence and
served the community as a shoe repair, barber shop, bakery, horse and
buggy rental, and an ice cream parlor.
In 1873 Luther
Gerard sold this vacant parcel to Edgar Gillette as Gillette set out to
add to what was becoming Bayport's business and community center on this
stretch of Middle Road which would include Snedecor's General Store
(Shand's), the firehouse, Methodist church and
Manhattan Hotel
and West's butcher shop. Gillette built a store with a residence
upstairs. In 1888, Gillette sold the building to Mr. J. Wagner, a shoe
maker or cobbler who briefly ran his business there supplying and
repairing shoes and boots.
From 1890 through
1915, multiple local business men provided goods and services from the
building. By 1890, the building was owned by Edward Edwards who rented
the store to Charles Smith of Patchogue as a barber shop inside while
Wallace Homan operated a horse and carriage rental and livery stable out
of the barn on the property. Henry and James Weeks bought the property
from Edward Edwards sometime between 1894 and 1902. The Weeks brothers
ran their ice cream parlor for several years but later sold the ice
cream business to the Rogers family who expanded the wholesale
manufacturing operations as the population and summer business boomed
along the south shore. The bakery and ice cream shop continued from 1894
to 1910.
On page 81 of the Bayport Heritage book, you
can see the Weeks Ice Cream Shop on a summer day with four men proudly
out front. While we cannot confirm their identities, they are most
likely the Weeks brothers, Homan or Smith the barber and a baker
(unknown name). A great photo with many adults and children in front.
There is a buggy on the right, which appears to be a delivery buggy.
Take a drive by this great old house and wonder what it might have been
like as an ice cream shop long ago.
