Yaphank had the
most unusual schoolhouse on Long Island, nearly 100 years ago, which
was a building octagonal in shape, with a cupola in the center for
light and ventilation. This was built in 1854 on a two-acre site
purchased from John and Betsey Owen for $100, and was located just
to the rear of the present Main Street school.
William J. Weeks
was the prime mover in the erection of this school, and a certain
eccentricity of his was shown in the octagonal shape of the building
and his own residence down the road near the Episcopal Church. It
was of similar design. This old schoolhouse served the village
until 1926, when the present one was built on the same site in front
of the old one, which was sold to Yaphank Fire Department and moved
a short distance down the street.
Beecher Homan had
this to say about the first Yaphank school, in his book “Yaphank As
It Is,” published in 1875: “For many years the young ideas of the
past generations struggled to master the rustic classics in a little
red painted, boxed up shanty, bearing the name of a schoolhouse,
that stood alone in an old field in the most extreme part of Upper
Yaphank. There Squire Homan once “ruled up” the pupils, and William
C. Booth and Brewster Saxton explained the mysteries of the half
explored globe.”
Considerable
activity is noted in the years around the middle of the last century
in the life of Yaphank, as the railroad came through Yaphank in
1844, and in addition to the Baptist Church and a new schoolhouse, a
post office was opened in 1846, the Presbyterian Church was built in
1851, and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in 1853. The business of
Yaphank in 1875 showed two grist mills, two lumber mills, a dry
goods and hardware store, two blacksmith shops, a printing office,
an upholstering shop, an express and stage line, a shoe shop, lumber
yard, two wheelright shops, two doctors and a meat market.