For local history buffs, the Suffolk County Historical Society’s head librarian, Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, emails a “Photo of the Week” newsletter to thousands of Long Islanders.
This week, she featured the Suffolk Traction Company, which was “a short-lived streetcar system that operated between Patchogue and Holtsville in about 1911 to 1919,” she wrote.
You could sign up at the historical society’s website and entering your email address.
This is from this week’s newsletter (below).
Photo Credit: Suffolk County Historical Society Library Archives
On July 1, 1911, the first streetcar ran down Main Street, Patchogue, and everybody who could climb aboard rode for free. A newspaper article from the time period notes that Patchogue’s street car was running on a regular hourly schedule between the corner of Main Street and Ocean Avenue to the post office in Blue Point.
It averaged about 900 passengers on a Saturday from noon to midnight, 750 on a Sunday, and more than 1,000 on a Monday. The tracks were completed to Holtsville and rails were laid in Port Jefferson, but the line was never completed and Holtsville was as far as it got before the company went bankrupt. On October 10, 1919, the last streetcar ran in Patchogue.
https://patchogue.greaterlongisland.com/2017/11/07/poll-type-attraction-love-see-patchogue/
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