The photographs in this collection document the local history of the Stony Brook area, of Suffolk County and of Long Island in general and provide
examples of historic photographic materials that relate to the interpretation of the Art and History Collection at the Museum.The images in all this collection come from a variety of formats from the beginnings of photography to the present day that include daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, albumen and gelatin prints, lantern slides, cartes de visite, glass plate negatives, postcards, color transparencies and snapshots.
Items of note include photographs by Israel G. Hawkins of Stony Brook that shows Hawkins’ Pine View Hotel in Stony Brook, bathers and boats on West Meadow Creek, West Meadow Beach, family portraits, and the surrounding area; Glass lantern slides taken by Hal B. Fullerton in the 1920’s that show the Long Island Rail Road experimental farm in Medford, Boy Scouts at Rainbow Ranch, other scenes from around Long Island; the Mount family of Stony Brook including artists William Sidney Mount and Shepard Alonzo mount, as well as many members of their family, with photos hand-colored by William S. Mount, and glass plate negatives of the Mount home and William S. Mount’s studio, taken by Edward Buffet; Photographs of ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy that include miscellaneous pictures taken on scientific expeditions as well as family and travel photos; Photographs taken by Arthur S. Greene.
The collection consists of images recently digitized through the Long Island Museum’s partnership with LILRC’s Accessing Archives Program in 2023.
