Long Island Museum
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
Long Island Museum
Carriage on display in the Carriage Museum
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
The Long Island Museum's history originates in the early half of the twentieth century. Ward Melville, his wife Dorothy, and Robert Cushman Murphy established the Suffolk Museum to bring art to the public. The original building still stands today, however, the museum has since moved. The Suffolk Museum's collections grew through out the mid-twentieth century, and eventually they became too large for the space to house.
Ward Melville purchased land for the new museum in 1955. This land was originally the site of lumber mills, and the sign of their presence there can still be seen today. Melville also purchased the D.T. Bayles Lumber Mill as the new museum building.
The present location of the museum appears to be more of a village than a museum site. This is because that is what Melville had envisioned when purchasing the mill and surrounding land. It was constructed to look similar to a New England Village. This historic "village" opened in 1974, with the addition of the Carriage Museum in 1987. The Carriages had been apart of the original collection since 1952. The museum's collections continue to grow, and today, visitors to the site feel as though they have traveled back in time.