Quiet at Sea And on Land

Clark House on Main Street (Photo From Nassau County Museum Collection, Long Island Studies Institute / )

Photographer Henry Otto Korten captured these scenes when he was taking postcard pictures of Long Island around the turn of the century. One shows a quiet harbor and the other a dirt road on a village street. Both images are part of a collection of uncaptioned Korten negatives at the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University.

History Answers

Several readers have identified the scene above as Greenport around 1910. ``The shot was of the Clark House, a room and board hotel on Main Street,'' wrote James Heaney of Greenport. Edward Kramer of Southold said guests included Walt Whitman and John Quincy Adams. He said the hotel closed in 1927, but its former kitchen was used by Greenport police until the building was demolished in 1954. Readers said the Reeves Memorial Fountain has been preserved and moved to a spot nearby.

Readers said the water scene was a photo of Port Washington taken from Manhasset Bay. Wesley Olsen of Port Washington said the old Warwick Hotel (now the Diwan Restaurant on Shore Road) is visible in the photo, as are a sand pit and a conveyor belt.