Here are some fun facts about the Swan River Schoolhouse on Roe Avenue in East Patchogue.
Built in 1858, it’s the second-oldest one room schoolhouse on Long Island that’s still on its original foundation.
The benches and pot belly stove are original.
And as of August, the schoolhouse is included on the National Register of Historic Places.
That last part was celebrated Monday in East Patchogue.
“It’s a big day for Patchogue, East Patchogue, the Town of Brookhaven, and it’s a big day for history,” said Steve Lucas, the treasurer of the Greater Patchogue Historical Society. “It’s an historic building and it’s surprising, when you think about it, that this building — on its original site — has lasted all these years. And while it does need some work, it’s still in pretty good shape.”
Getting the federal recognition took cooperation between the Historical Society, which maintains the property, and the Town of Brookhaven, which owns it.
The distinction also allows for easier access to grant money for building repairs moving forward.
“Sometimes when development sweeps [over an area] we forget that there was a history long before us, and there were people who lived here …,” said Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine. “They carved out of this land a livelihood and a social structure and they had schools as small as this.”
Romaine and Lucas both pointed out that before compulsory school attendance laws were passed in the state in 1874, communities either hired a teacher and educated children in private homes, or pooled their resources and built schoolhouses such as the one on Roe Avenue.
In East Patchogue in 1857, the tiny East Patchogue School District’s lone trustee, Norton Robinson, purchased the schoolhouse land for $25 from Stephen and Huldahand Roe and donated it to the district for the building.
The approval of that transaction is noted in meeting minutes that are still available through the Patchogue-Medford School District, which later absorbed the East Patchogue district.
On Monday, Patchogue-Medford Superintendent Michael Hynes ceremoniously rang the school bell that had sat atop the building — before it was blown down in the Hurricane of 1938.
“If history repeats itself … when I look at a one-room schoolhouse like this, I think of individualized instruction, and for me that’s the ultimate way to become educated,” Dr. Hynes said.
He said he’s looking forward to history repeating itself in this case.
Also on hand Monday was Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri, whose grandmother, Rose Mazzoti, was among those educated at the schoolhouse in the earliest years of the 20th century.
“The fact that this has survived is a testament to this administration …. and their commitment to education and the history of education,” Pontieri said. “And it’s a testament that we as a community has managed, for a hundred and something years, to keep [the schoolhouse] in the condition that it’s in.”
Brookhaven Councilman Neil Foley pledged to help address needed repairs.
“We have definitive plans to improve this house and work on the foundation,” he said.
Top: The Swan River Schoolhouse at 31 Roe Avenue. (Credit: Michael White)
