Bayview School House

Built in 1822, the Bay View Schoolhouse originally stood on the triangle of land where Jacob’s Lane meets Bayview Road, adjacent to the old Hallock farm in Great Hog Neck. When the school closed in 1926, there were, 38 girls and boys, from the first grade on up crowded into the building.

School began at 9am and the children lined up outside, boys in one row, girls in another, they watched the flag raised and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Then they filed in, took their seats, the roll was called and the teacher assigned the day’s work.

Children were taught reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, geography, & history. One class at a time (usually only three or four children) came to the front of the room to sit on a bench near the teacher’s desk to recite the day’s lessons. 

Boys sat on one side of the room, girls on the other, at two rows of double desks. Some years when a larger group was in attendance, desks were also set up in a row behind the wood stove. The stove pipe extended overhead to the back wall. Pupils brought wood from home, and the older boys were responsible for stoking the fire. On very cold days, former students remember cocoa steaming on the stove.

There was no electricity, no running water. Kerosene lamps stood in wall brackets. Drinking water was ladled from a pail or brought in from a pump in the yard. Before chemical toilets were installed, about 1922, girls and boys had to cross Bayview Road to use a privy. 

Everyone walked to school in the morning and home again in the afternoon and walked home for lunch midday too. The Bay View School served a farming community, and every child had chores to do before and after school. 

Antiquities, Society for the Preservation of Long Island's. Historic House Inventory - Southold Town. Survey for New York State , unpublished, 1976-1987.

Fleming, Geoffrey K. Images of America Southold. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

Hallock, Joseph Nelson, Fleming, Geoffrey K. Southold Reminiscences. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2008.

Interviews by the Southold Historical Society, Oral Interviews of Residents of Southold (1980s).

Markers, Committee for the Guide to Historic. Guide to Historic Markers. Southold, New York: Southold Historical Society, 1960.

Whitaker, Epher. Whitaker's Southold. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1931.