Mystery surrounds Huntington shop's murals

Relics are scattered throughout the basement of Yankee Peddler Antiques & Workshop in Huntington Station.

Perhaps the most intriguing are three pieces without price tags -- a trio that together remain a modern-day mystery.

The three large murals were painted sometime between 1914 and the 1920s, local historians say.

The scenes range from the disturbing to the peculiar. One depicts a lynching. Another shows a lanky devil leading six smaller demons carrying a coffin as a pig follows close behind. The third shows four African-American men with a caption, attributed to the controversial folktale character Uncle Remus: "A Gentleman is a gentleman, regahdless of color and always pays for his drinks."

The mystery: Who was the artist? Or, artists?

According to local legend, they were black chauffeurs whiling away time in the basement of what was then the Venice Hotel, waiting to ferry their bosses via horse-and-buggy to homes along the North Shore.

"People would come to stay at the hotel for the night," said Huntington Town historian Robert C. Hughes. "Maybe they were going up to Lloyd Neck and the weather was bad so they would stop here after getting off the train and the chauffeurs would stay downstairs, get a drink. Maybe somebody was an artist."

Jack Murray, Yankee Peddler manager for more than two decades, said the tale has been told to him often by longtime Huntington Station residents.

"The story has been passed down over generations," he said.

Michelle Mascaro, granddaughter of the owner of the hotel, built in 1914, tells a different tale. "I was told it was some itinerants," said Mascaro, of Chicago, "some people who came through, I don't know if they were black or Italian . . . and said, 'I'll paint this and give me a stay or a beer,' or whatever. I think it was a trade thing."

None of the murals is signed, said Hughes, who is not convinced the paintings were created by a black artist because of the lynching scene and the "minstrel-showy" facial features on some of the men in the captioned mural.

Irene Moore, chairwoman of the local African American Historic Designation Council, also is skeptical of the local legend.

"People are making a lot of assumptions," Hughes said. "Into the '20s the Ku Klux Klan was active in Huntington. We really just don't know."

Mascaro's tale, he said, carries "a little more weight because it comes through the family."

There are no plans to remove or restore the murals, two of which are severely faded, but Hughes said the building's owners have been sensitive to their historical value.

"Their value is part of the story of this building, and this building is part of the story of Huntington Station," he said. "It's one of the few survivors of the urban renewal period . . . This building survived and these murals have survived."

Hughes said if the murals remain intact there's a chance someone will unravel the mystery. "There might be somebody else out there who will come down here some day and see them and say, 'Oh, you know, my grandfather told me . . . ' "