Residents asked to help preserve Huntington Station memorabilia

The Max and Rosie Teich Homestead in Huntington Station could soon be a local historic landmark and home to a permanent exhibit of memorabilia from the hamlet’s heyday.

Huntington Town Board member Joan Cergol is asking residents to help preserve Huntington Station’s history by donating artifacts and memorabilia from the first half of the 20th century to chronicle the community’s past. The artifacts will be placed on exhibit in the house at 12 Academy Place.

“We’re looking for anything and everything that someone might stumble upon that they consider either junk or precious,” Cergol said. “I wanted to see what kind of reaction I would get if I asked ‘look into your drawers, attics, basements and closets and see if you could turn up memorabilia that could be connected to the old Huntington Station pre urban renewal.’ ”

Urban renewal came through in the 1960s, removing longtime businesses and changing the landscape of what was a thriving downtown.

The impetus for the hunt was a receipt dated 1960 from the Levine Brothers Kosher Butcher Shop with the address still legible. The location was known to have housed a barber shop but the receipt showed it also had been the butcher shop, town officials said.

Cergol said so far she’s heard from a man whose grandmother ran a beauty shop in Huntington Station and wants to loan the town a hair dryer used in the shop in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

Toby Kissam, a Huntington Historical Society board member and former president, is curating artifacts for the exhibit.

“We’re looking for all sorts of things but on the smaller side that can be placed in glass cases,” he said. “Things that businesses put out at that time that established the commercial area of what I call downtown Huntington Station.”

Meanwhile, the Teich Homestead which is in Gateway Park, is being considered for designation as a Huntington historic landmark. The town’s Historic Preservation Commission has recommended the property for the designation based on its representation of early suburban development of Huntington Station and for the achievements and contributions of the namesake family, Cergol said.

The Teich Homestead is an early 20th century farmhouse that the town purchased, renovated and redesigned to house exhibits on community history and demonstrations linked to produce grown at the adjacent community garden.

The property is named after the family who lived in the house and ran a dairy on the site. Currently on exhibit is a recreation of the medical office of Dr. Samuel Teich, a community physician who delivered thousands of babies and cared for numerous patients in Huntington Station from 1935 to 1985. Max and Rosie Teich operated a dairy farm at the property in the early 20th century. Samuel is their son.

“It’s protected because it’s on parkland,” Cergol said, “but it’s truly something special and worthy of local landmark designation.”