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To Restore a Historic Site, a Treasure Hunt
New York Times April 13, 2008
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- Oakdale

A FRANKLIN stove circa 1830. Replicas of
150-year-old wooden rocking chairs. Antique fishing
tackle. Duck decoys a century old. Stuffed wild
turkeys. Rows of narrow, footlong lockers to
fit liquor bottles. Keys to lock up the
alcohol.

These are just some of the items in the billiard
room of the former Southside Sportsmen’s Club, once
a refuge for the likes of Louis C. Tiffany, August
Belmont and William K. Vanderbilt in what is now the
Connetquot River State Park Preserve.

“It’s like you dropped back about 50 years,” said
Gil Bergen, the park manager.

“It still has that feeling.”

As part of an effort to restore the club building,
parts of which date to the 1820s, to its original
luster 35 years after it was shuttered, Mr. Bergen
and others have been on a treasure hunt for more of
the artifacts that filled it.

Mr. Bergen and Friends of Connetquot, a nonprofit
group helping to maintain the 3,473-acre park and
its history, hope that by spreading the word on $3
Sunday tours and beyond, more of the 300 missing
items will be located.

“We’re hoping things are just sitting in attics and
people realize we want them back,” said Bob Labuski,
president of Friends of Connetquot.

Lemon-scented wood cleaner filled the air during a
recent journey through time in each room — a fishing
rod room, the men’s dining hall, a large kitchen and
pantry, a ladies’ dining and sitting room. On
the top floor of the three-story building are 24
bedrooms. Women were allowed in the men’s areas only
one day a year — New Year’s.

When the club closed in 1973, citing high taxes,
many items were auctioned, and the stove was
presented to the New-York Historical Society.
About a decade ago, as the restoration got under
way, the Historical Society leased the stove back to
the park for $1 a year.

One original hardwood rocking chair dating to the
1860s was recovered, and Mr. Bergen said six
replicas were made for $600 each.

The restoration project is just the latest chapter
in the park’s distinctive history. The
Secatogue Indians called the area Connetquot for
“great river.” In 1683 they sold it to William
Nicoll, the founder of Islip Town.

Around 1820, the Nicoll family leased some land to
Eliphalet Snedecor, who founded a tavern that became
a coach stop for Montauk-bound travelers.
Forty years later, a group of wealthy sportsmen
bought the tavern from the Snedecor family and some
land.

“The club was the magnet that drew all people to the
south side of Long Island,” Mr. Bergen said. “This
was the Gold Coast in the 1890s.”

The Southside Sportsmen’s Club was incorporated in
1866, and 100 members each
held 100 shares of stock worth $500 at that time,
Mr. Bergen said. In 1963, the state bought the
land for $6.2 million, but the club leased the area
for 10 more years. In 1973, the year the club
closed, it was placed on the National Register of
Historic Sites.

On a recent brisk day, Gigi Simonetti of Islip
Terrace was walking her horse along the old Montauk
Highway where horse-drawn coaches once
click-clacked. Gripping the reins of her blond
palomino named Prince, she said the restoration
project was overdue.

“I’m a big fan of history, and I’m a firm believer
in preserving it,” she said. Ms. Simonetti
said she was happy to traipse through what was once
a men’s-only club. “Aha,” she said she thought
to herself the first time she entered. “I’m
here now.”

There are other restoration projects at the park.
An ice house may become a library, Mr. Labuski said.
A wheat and corn mill built in the 1700s is
undergoing renovations.

Mr. Labuski hopes that within a year, the mill will
be completed and added to the list of park
attractions — horseback and walking trails, a fish
hatchery and fly-fishing.

What comes after the restoration projects?

“We’ll just get it ready,” Mr. Bergen said, “for the
next 100 years, that’s all.” |
Club and Mill History in the Remaking in Oakdale
Newsday - March 16, 2008
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In 1973, the members of the South Side Sportsmen's
Club held an auction. Before their Oakdale
headquarters - built as a tavern in 1820 and
converted to a clubhouse in 1866 - was turned over
to the state to become a park, the men gathered to
sell off nearly everything inside it.

The furniture went. So did the Steinway grand, the
stuffed fish, even the teapot with a broken handle.
The stove, circa 1820, was auctioned, too.

Gilbert Bergen, park ranger for what is now called
Connetquot River State Park Preserve, was there. And
he wants it all back.

"At that time, the state was interested in the
property and they weren't thinking about furnishings
and that sort of thing," said Bergen, 78.

Now, of course, it seems a shame that all those
items - from fishing rods to works of art - were
dispersed, he said.

Bergen has been steward of the place since 1960,
when it was still a private club. For a century, it
catered to some of the most prominent names in New
York business and politics.
Distinguished visitors

Presidents Theodore Roose- velt and Herbert Hoover
visited, likely retiring to the club's billiard room
for a drink next to the ornate Franklin stove.

Now Bergen and a group of supporters called the
Friends of Connetquot River State Park Preserve are
working to restore the historic clubhouse and nearby
flour mill to their former states.

They're asking descendants of club members to donate
or loan back the clubhouse's original furnishings.
And the state, with financial support from the
Friends, is restoring the 18th-century mill.

The park's 3,473 acres first belonged to the
Secatogue Indians, who named the river "Connetquot,"
which means "Great River." In 1684 and 1697, they
sold the land on both sides of the river to William
Nicoll, the father of Islip Town.

Nicoll built the Oakdale Grist Mill around 1750.
Used by local farmers to grind corn - called "grist"
- and wheat, the mill had a horizontal wheel beneath
the building that was propelled by the flowing
water.

In 1820, Eliphalet Snecedor opened the Snedecor Inn,
a stagecoach stop along old South Country Road.
Forty-six years later, his wealthy patrons, who came
for the excellent fishing and hunting, bought the
property to form a private club.

"We are very fortunate that the old gentlemen who
had the South Side Sportsmen's Club were here,"
Richard Remmer, former president of the Friends,
said while standing next to the mill, which soon
will be lowered onto new foundations.

"They had the means to preserve the building," he
said. "It's the only horizontal water mill left
probably anywhere on the East Coast, if not in the
United States."
Getting the mill working again

Most mills were converted to vertical wheels in the
late 1880s, not long after the sportsmen's club was
founded and the Oakdale Grist Mill stopped
operating, Remmer said.

After a $150,000 restoration of the deteriorating
structure, Remmer hopes to make it a working mill
again. That will cost another $150,000. So far, the
Friends have raised $105,000 to contribute to the
project.

The park currently operates a 19th-century hatchery,
stocking the river with trout. Connetquot also
features 50 miles of hiking, horseback riding,
cross-country ski and nature trails. It also offers
educational programs and tours of the old clubhouse.

Inside that three-story shingled lodge, Friends
members and park staff walk through expansive rooms,
pointing out a few original furnishings that have
been recovered - or reproduced.

The billiard room once again features its antique
Franklin stove, on loan from the New-York Historical
Society, to which it had been donated. The Friends
have commissioned replicas of several rocking
chairs, also for the billiard room.

Two original John James Audubon prints -
"Canvas-backed Duck" and "Dusky Duck" - hang in the
men's dining room, but the dining set in the ladies'
dining room doesn't do justice to the original
Windsor chairs, said Linda Kasten, 54, a park staff
member who once worked in the club's kitchen.

Bergen has an inventory of 300 items auctioned in
1973. The pieces were considered private property of
the club's member-shareholders, and were not
included in the sale of the buildings and land to
the state for $6.5 million. The proceeds of the
auction were split among the members.

Remmer, 52, who remembers coming to the club as a
boy with his father, would like to see the return of
an oak card table, with a top that came off to
reveal a green felt playing surface for poker. He
also hopes to re-equip the kitchen, which used to
serve Clams South Side, a type of clam hash.

But Bergen will be happy to see even the broken
teapot.

"We're really not choosy at all," he said. "It was
all interesting. It's just
nice to have them come home."

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc. |
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