Smithtown Past and Present: Main Street Stands at a Crossroads

With respect to the preservation of history, downtown Smithtown has a checkered past. Photographs of Main Street from as late as 1950 reveal a place largely foreign to the modern strip.

Chains haven't stifled the old mom-and-pop stores- after all, that distinctive neon sign of Smithtown Appliance Co. on East Main Street has stood unchanged for decades. Rather, it's old, residential buildings from 60 years ago and further back that have disappeared from Smithtown's principal thoroughfare. 

On modern Main Street, they are now mostly gone, and even local institutions like the Caleb Smith House are not as local as residents might assume. The house was moved by truck from Commack in 1955, when developers clashed with residents who wanted the structure to remain intact.

"At a certain point in time that was the answer," Smithtown Historical Society curator Joshua Ruff said. "They moved a lot of these old houses out of the way, which thank goodness they did. There's always the concern that when you move the structure you're taking it out of its historic context, but you want to keep the thing, so that's the compromise that's been [forged]."

Photos at the Caleb Smith House document the move, and the image of a two-story house maneuvered by flat-bed looks a bit absurd to the modern eye.

Ruff, Society President and Historian Bradley Harris and Society Director Kiernan Lannon are currently working on a book that will contrast photos of old Smithtown with the modern, identically-placed snapshots of photographer John DiGiacomo.

The product will be a historical guidebook "that people can actually be thumbing through as they're driving on the street." It follows up on the trio's previous effort, "Images of America: Smithtown," which presented dozens of historic photos but was more focused on time than on place.

For their research, the trio combed through records at the Smithtown Library and within the Society's own archives. While they hesitate to generalize about the changes that have overtaken Main Street in the last few decades, they have been able to point to one era – the 20-year span between 1950 and 1970 – as decisive in Main Street's transformation from old-residential to commercial.

"The momentum of it started in the '50s. There were a number of important houses in [the following] decades that were lost," Ruff said. "Once the houses were lost, they were not being replaced by other houses. Businesses were being built in their places. [Even] a lot of the storefronts that you see now when you drive down Main Street have changed radically."

There was a Methodist Episcopal Church between Elm and Maple Avenues, where Chase Bank currently resides. There was a Smithtown Central Hotel at the corner of Lawrence Avenue, a Conklin and Jaynes General Store on Hauppauge Road. Hundreds of homes dotted the space between.

 "It's both encouraging [to have retained some landmarks] and a little bit frustrating and disappointing sometimes to see that some landmarks are gone," he said. "It's really quite amazing to see the things that are gone, and to see how the development of this particular place has been rapacious. I'm concerned with the consequences of how the overall community looks as a result of this."

Largely responsible for the change, no doubt, was the town's postwar population boom. But increased population does not always beget demolition, as places like Princeton, Southampton, and the Adirondacks can testify. Why was Smithtown different?

"Whether it was zoning laws being more permissive here than they were in some places, maybe, but that's a guess," Ruff said. "I just think that the town has kind of struggled with these issues."

Such issues cut to the core of any community's identity. If a place is defined by its past, then how much of its present should be compromised? And in the context of growing commerce, is such history maintained appropriately by keeping extensive records, by moving houses out of their geographic context to save them, or only by letting structures stand on their original foundations? The answer is not always agreed upon, but the importance of the question is universally appreciated.

"I don't think that you would talk to a person anywhere, developers included, who would say that they disrespect history or they don't have admiration or an understanding for old historic structures," Ruff said. "There's a tension between being able to maintain [old structures] and to be able to sort of step forward and meet the needs of local businesses, and some places do it better than others. We just have to hope that people appreciate them and take care of them."