Cooling Off In The Old Days

Men Outside a Saloon (Suffolk County Historical Society Photo / )

Today's mystery photographs show some men outside a saloon and some women at the waterside, perhaps on Lake Ronkonkoma.

The photos exist with incomplete caption information in the files of the Suffolk County Historical Society in Riverhead.

History Answers

Dorothy Speer, an amateur historian of her Middle Village community, identified the photo above right as the Hirsch Bros. Saloon. The building was located on the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and 80th Street in Queens, she says, across the street from St. John's Cemetery. The tavern was in business in the late 19th Century. The photo is in the collection of the Suffolk County Historical Society but has no caption information.