Town historian settles into new office space at renovated East Lawn building

The Riverhead town historian is settled into new, larger quarters in the historic East Lawn building, which has housed the town historian’s office since 1988.

The town historian now occupies a suite on the east side of the first floor of the circa 1850 landmark — rooms brighter and more spacious than the former space on the west side of the building.

The new office has more room for the historian’s files — original source documents dating back to 1797, five years after the Town of Riverhead was founded by secession from the Town of Southold. And now that the historic building has been restored and renovated by Joseph Petrocelli, who purchased East Lawn from the town last year, the collections of historic documents maintained in the office are no longer exposed to dampness, humidity and fluctuations in temperature as they were before the renovations.

Georgette Case, town historian since 2002, had been lobbying for a new home for the town historian’s office for several years because of the prevailing conditions at East Lawn, a once-stately mansion that had fallen into disrepair under town ownership. Lack of maintenance had taken its toll on the structure, which desperately needed a paint job and window glazing for many years. A plastic tarp covered a missing section of roof. Petrocelli bought the building for $150,000, with a condition being a three-year lease to the town for the historian’s office at $10 per square foot.

The landmark was saved from a developer’s wrecking ball more than 30 years ago, when the town bought the home from the developer of the office complex that now surrounds it. The developer planned to demolish it to make way for another office building. A group of Riverhead residents fought to save the two-story Italianate home, built by Hubbard Corwin and originally part of his 50-acre farm stretching north from East Main Street, east of Ostrander Avenue. Corwin’s granddaughter, Marion Terry, who inherited East Lawn in 1956, sold it to the developer.

The town bought it in 1984, restored the building and converted it into office space for use by the town historian and several community groups, which took occupancy in 1988, the year it was designated a town landmark. The other tenants — Riverhead Community Awareness Program, Riverhead Chamber of Commerce and the Riverhead Housing Development Corp. found new office space elsewhere.

Case is pleased with the new office, which is open to the public on Wednesdays.

In addition to the town’s historic papers, the office boasts collections by subject matter and genealogies and vertical files of newspaper clippings and other documents by topic. Among the holdings are an assortment of photos, postcards, scrap books, pamphlets and books about local history, programs for events that took place in the town, newsletters published by local organizations, information about the town’s earliest businesses, Riverhead High School yearbooks and even a “Townopoly” game featuring Riverhead Town as it was in 1989.

“I didn’t even know we had that until we moved,” Case said of the board game. “You never know what you’re going to find here.”

Ask a question about nearly anything from the town’s past and Case can usually find something about it — with incredible speed — in the treasure trove of files she maintains, both on paper and now, digitally as well. A Riverhead High School intern, Shannon Zeltmann, has been busy scanning documents and creating digital copies of the town historian’s holdings.

Each town in New York State is mandated by state law to appoint a town historian, Case said.

Riverhead is the only town in Suffolk County that does not have a town-specific historical society, she notes. The Suffolk County Historical Society— a private nonprofit organization, not an agency of county government — maintains a large library and museum on West Main Street in Riverhead.

Case, who traces her own ancestry to the North Fork’s founding families and serves as the corresponding secretary of the Suffolk Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, loves researching the history of the town and helping others learn about its past. She can be reached by email or by calling the town historian’s office at (631) 369-9717.