Continued from last week:
When the library was built in 1895, Job’s Lane as a street
was still unimproved. From an old scrapbook we glean the following: “Job’s Lane
beginning at Main Street; its course is due west and it ends in Windmill Lane.
Its grade is downward and having only surface drainage, at every heavy rainfall
two roaring torrents rush westward to find sea level, tearing ugly gullies on
either side of the way. The sidewalks are above the level of the street and
their edges chopped and ragged, with grass and weeds unkempt.
“This ancient thoroughfare which for more than 200 years has
been a quaint by-way has suddenly become a popular and populous mart. Here are
the emporiums of Howell, Gray, Bellows, Schenck, Fanning, Bishop, and Post. The
merchants too have devised horseblocks place din front of their stores to
facilitate the exit of ladies from their carriages for victorias and dog carts
are many in the land.”
After the incorporation of the Village in 1894 with Mr.
Albert J. Post as President, J.W.F. Howell, George H. Hallock, and George F.
Wines as Trustees, improvements came rapidly. The Telephone Co. and Electric
Light Co. were established within a year and Job’s Lane rivaled Main Street in
the attention of the new officials. One of their first efforts was to widen the
narrow street to the required three rods and this was gradually done as
improvements were made and shops rebuilt.
The first section after the Library was built, Mr. Samuel L.
Parrish, to whose interest and enterprise Southampton owes so much of her
development, carried out his conception of an Art Museum and botanical gardens.
Some time before this he had purchased from Dr. John Nugent the Zephaniah
Rogers corner on Main Street and made it his home. Failing to secure the
desired frontage for his plan on Main Street, he turned his attention to Job’s
Lane and there just beyond the Library he purchased the property which was the
beginning of the Art Museum.
The central part of the building was completed in 1897 and a
remarkable collection of art objects were placed within. Each year the
collection has been developed and the building several times enlarged until the
Parrish Art Museum stands today an impressive memorial—speaking in terms most eloquent
of the deep interest and abiding affection for Southampton and her people of
Mr. Samuel L. Parrish and his brother, James.
We could continue indefinitely the story of Job’s Lane and
its inhabitants who through the years have played their part and passed into
history. The Howell boys built their homes on the Lane on either side of the
store. These all have passed to others except one—Aunt Jane remains with face
as rosy and smiling as when she came a bride forty odd years ago. The old
Howell home is now owned and has lately been remodeled by Mr. Wallace Halsey
and here Principal Sabine made his home during the first years of his residence
here.
A fire recently destroyed much of what was the Howell’s
store but the portion which was the feed annex has been for several summers the
exclusive shop of Peck & Peck.
Mr. Albert Reeves years ago removed his barn and farmyard
from the Lane, improving it with the building which in October 1902 became the
home of the Southampton Press. So even the newspaper came to Job’s Lane!
Somewhat later Mr. Reeves removed from the corner the house which—though
several times remodeled—had marked the entrance to the Lane for two hundred
years. This stands on the south end of the lot on South Main Street, leaving
the corner vacant and so it has remained until the present time but, as we
write, the foundations are being laid for a block of stores which are to be
ready for occupancy in June. “Normandy Farmhouse” is the design of the
architects, we are told, unlike anything Southampton has yet seen, and a far
departure from the simplicity of the Colonial designs, which are both the charm
and heritage of our ancient town. Though we are sure the building will be an
improvement which was sure to come, let us long remember the vacant lot in the
heart of our business section with its rows of rambler roses along the Lane.
To return again, it is pleasant to recall the stores of
Hirshfield, the clothier,--(was not this our first--?), Raynor, Mabs, the
tailor, Rosen, Jedlicka, Platt, Post and Kent, Martin and Lefevre, and ------
On the north side of the street, Mrs. Isham has built her
home and Mr. Wich his drug store. Oh! forty years ago, Mr. W.J. Post bought the
home of Frederick Fanning and built his shoe store beside it. The store is now
the McGurn Market and the house is owned by Robert Day. After W.D. Van Brunt
removed his plumbing business to Main Street, the building was used for a
number of years as a meat market by Valentine Schenck and after him came the
Gilmartin Bros., to have a part in the more progressive Southampton. The modest
shop of Fordham & Elliston has become a landmark of Job’s Lane as have also
its proprietors. Let us not forget Simon Rhodes, another of God’s handymen, who
counted his time as nothing and charged only for materials. He could do
anything from mending a skate to painting a picture of a whaleship and do it
well. The shop is still there quite recreated by artist Hollenbeck. In assign
we must not forget Mr. Biggs. It was indeed a tiny shop where you could buy almost
anything from a marble to a house lot, even an ice cream cone. We cannot resist
relating here the incident of the small boy—now one of Southampton’s leading
physicians—who went to the City with his mother to do Christmas shopping. She
noticed that he looked around a good deal but evinced no desire to do his
errands. When she inquired the reason he said he had decided to wait until he
returned home for he could “do better at Biggs’s.”
It would be interesting to speak of the man new shops,
which, during the past few years, have made Job’s Lane a busy and attractive
place especially in the summer season. Gown shops, Real Estate, offices and
automobile showrooms have sprung up like mushrooms and so transformed the Lane
that even two years have wrought a complete change. Too much cannot be said of
the work of the Village Improvement Association, which under the efficient
leadership of Mrs. Arthur B. Claflin has created sentiment, which has so
transformed the Lane that every little shop, new or old, has been recreated. A
touch of bright colored paint, a box of flowers, a row of hollyhocks to screen
a wall or driveway, has worked wonders. It is no wonder that tourists who have traveled the length and breadth of our country come to us and say they have
seen nothing anywhere more beautiful than our beloved Southampton.
To be sure, Job’s Lane is narrow and congested and without
the diversion of traffic to Nugent Street which has taken place in very recent
years the problem would be far more difficult.
If we think of it, as it has always been in reality, a
bridge between two important sections of the Village, Job’s Lane becomes no
longer a narrow street.
The men of ancient days who opened the street, Job Sayre and
Edmund Howell, could think only in terms of the slow moving ex-team but could
they have foreseen the tings which were to come to pass in this, our twentieth
century, we are sure they would have given us a much wider street and have
marveled unceasingly at all that the future should unfold.
Text courtesy Lizbeth Halsey White Files,
Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center
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