SUFFOLK

Setauket

In the historic Setauket African-American community, found along Christian Avenue, many residents trace their ancestry back for 200 years or more, and point to Native-American ancestry as well. William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) painted several families’ progenitors in the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Christian Avenue streetscape in proposed Bethel Christian Avenue Laurel Hill Historic District. CHARLA BOLTON

Threatened by the recent demolition of the community's oldest residence, the R.W. Hawkins House, built about 1860, which has been replaced with an incompatible dwelling, a committee has been formed Setauket under the leadership of Robert Lewis, to explore establishing a historic district to protect the community from unwarranted demolition, inappropriate development and, indeed, the loss of the community itself. Councilman Steve Fiore-Rosenfeld, representing northwest Brookhaven, members of the Town of Brookhaven Historic Districts Advisory Committee, and SPLIA have joined together with local residents in a series of informational meetings. The informally proposed historic district is centered around the present Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church. Originally located at the intersection of Woodfield Road, the church moved in 1874 to its present site at the corner of Christian and Locust Avenues, and, after a fire, was rebuilt in 1910. Nathaniel Prime's 1845 History of Long Island identifies a congregation of 26 in the Setauket AME Church. The Irving S. Hart VFW, which together with the church, serves as a de facto community center, and two historic community cemeteries, the original Bethel AME church cemetery dating from the church's founding in 1845, and the Laurel Hill Cemetery founded in 1815, and still used today, are also included in the proposed district. Thirty-two residential property owners, with properties facing both sides of Christian Avenue, between Lake Street and Mud Road, form the balance of the proposed district.