Goldsmith's Boat Shop of Southold, 'founding pillar' of North Fork recreational boating industry, celebrates centennial

In 1922, Alvah Goldsmith decided to buy an Evinrude outboard motor for his rowboat.

Goldsmith, who liked to explore the creeks around Southold, was so impressed with the engine that he wrote the manufacturer to say so. Company founder Ole Evinrude wrote back to say that if Goldsmith liked his product that much, maybe he’d like to become a dealer. At a time when most people on the water were doing so for a living, not recreation, the only requirement was buying one more engine to resell.

Goldsmith asked his father and, recalled Alvah’s son, Alvah Jr., “His father said, ‘I don’t know who would buy the cussed things, but if you want to try it, go ahead.’ ”

So Goldsmith, a foreman at a local auto shop, quit his job and, in 1923, began selling engines off the front porch of his family’s house in Peconic to not only commercial fishermen, but also a growing number of recreational anglers and others who just wanted to enjoy being out on the water. The business was so successful that he was soon storing motors in the family barn and, within a few years, he had opened his own store.

That was the genesis of Goldsmith’s Boat Shop — a Southold business that is the oldest continuously operating marine dealership in the country, according to a 1986 survey by Boating Industry magazine.

Goldsmith is also credited with founding the marine recreation industry on the North Fork.

“He was the founding pillar of the recreational boating industry here on the North Fork,” said Bill Lieblein, 84, owner of Port of Egypt Marine, located in Southold a mile from Goldsmith’s. “There’s no question about that.”

And now, after surviving the Great Depression, expanding exponentially to build boats for the Navy during World War II and weathering hurricanes and the pandemic, Goldsmith’s is celebrating its centennial.

BEGAN ON THE FRONT PORCH

The Goldsmith family history in Southold dates to the 1640s, according to Alvah Jr., who is still known by his childhood nickname of Skip. There is even a Goldsmith’s Inlet in Peconic named after the family, whose initial property was in that hamlet. His grandfather, Harrison Goldsmith, was a farmer.

“At that time, the property that they owned went from the North Road all the way up to the Sound, about a mile,” Skip said. Alvah Sr. sold the property around 1950.

It was there that Alvah Sr. started selling motors. By the mid-1920s, he moved the operation from his front porch and barn to a building on Peconic Lane in Peconic. In 1931, Alvah Sr. moved his business again, relocating from the small inland site to two acres on Southold Bay at Founders Landing. There, the company survived not only the Great Depression but also the collapse of a new storage shed during the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, one of the most destructive storms in recorded history.

Goldsmith’s remained small and local “until he got involved in building boats for the Navy in the Second World War,” Skip, 83, said.

Up to then, Alvah Sr. just sold motors and small craft built by others but, said Skip, “He wanted to get involved because he believed in the war effort and he figured his business would fit right into making boats for the military. So he had to make trips into Whitehall Street in New York to meet with the Navy brass. After a bunch of trips, they finally gave him the OK.

“The first contract was for 10 boats, 24 to 35 feet, and they were built to carry torpedoes, bombs and stuff like that that they would have to load on seaplanes in the Pacific,” Skip said. “They had 48 employees then.”

The completed “plane re-arming boats” were put through speed trials, weighed and put on railroad flatcars. Over the course of the war, Goldsmith’s would build 138 of the small craft.

“The property was all fenced in with guards during the war,” Skip said. “One day a car rolls up and all the Navy brass get out of it and they start looking around the place. My father inquired, ‘Is there a problem with something?’ ” A Navy official said some of the boats that had been acquired from different boatyards had not been built to specifications and were breaking down in the South Pacific, but that Goldsmith’s did not appear to be one of them.

“That was quite a relief,” Skip said.

Just how well the Goldsmith boats were built was proven three decades later. “I got a letter in the ’70s from a boy who went out to California to go to work as a fisherman for somebody,” Skip said. “And on the bow of the boat he saw a plaque that said it was built at a boat shop in Southold, Long Island, 1944. It was still going strong long after the war.”

A NEW LOCATION

With the return of peace, Alvah Sr. in 1946 bought the 17-acre former Sanford Brickyard, which dated to the late 1800s but had not withstood the 1938 hurricane. The property, on Main Road along Mill Creek, is a mile and a half from the Founders Landing site, which the family sold about 20 years ago.

The deteriorating historic chimney from the brick kiln — a local landmark notated on nautical navigation charts — was recently restored by Skip’s sons, Glenn and Craig.

At the new site, Goldsmith’s no longer built boats. Instead, the company shifted to selling and servicing mass-produced small craft for the booming recreational market with about 10 employees, the same number as now.

“I started working here when I was 14 years old,” Skip recounted. “I was fooling around the place earlier than that. When I started kindergarten, my mother told the teacher that I might have some language that might not be compatible with kindergarten.”

She was right, and thanks to what he heard from the boatyard employees, Skip had his mouth washed out with soap on a regular basis and was forced to sit in a corner behind a piano.

As a 14-year-old employee, Skip said, “I was mostly a roustabout, making coffee and apparently getting more in the way than anything else. It was something to keep me off the streets.”

His initial interest was painting boat bottoms, which he learned to do under the scrutiny of longtime employees.

Skip knew early on that his future lay in continuing the family business. “I kind of had that in mind ever since I grew up and got my first boat,” he said.

Despite suspecting his career would end at the marina, Skip attended college and did a stint as an Air Force mechanic before returning in 1964 to the boat shop. He became the owner when his father died of pancreatic cancer in 1980 at age 74.

His sons have also found their way to the business — with a few detours.

Craig, 48, graduated from high school in 1992, went to college and worked at several different jobs but, he said, “Everything seemed to draw me back into the family business, so around 1999 was when I decided this was going to be my career.”

Glenn, 46, said he started working for his father when he was 9 or 10. “Both my brother and I started pumping gas and working at the Founders Landing location for a couple of years, then we shifted down to this yard and worked summers, weekends,” he said.

After college, Glenn says he returned to work full time for the business. He then went to work for Sea Tow, the international marine assistance company founded in Southold, in 2015 and became a town trustee like his grandfather. He came back to the family firm full time in 2020 after working part time at Goldsmith’s as his father’s health became more fragile.

The pandemic persuaded Skip to take a step back because he was worried about being around a lot of people as he got older. It also took a toll on the business.

“COVID just about shut everything down,” said Skip, who is still the company president. “It didn’t come back until this past year. It was a situation where you couldn’t get parts, you couldn’t get motors, you couldn’t get boats, and people wanted to buy. And I’m talking about boats that sell for more than $100,000. It’s come back gradually but not quite to where it was before. There are still shortages of things.”

Skip said closing the business “never entered our minds. We just kept plugging along and wondering what’s next.”

Since Evinrude is no longer building engines, the business sells Yamaha outboards, Scout and DuraNautic boats and Achilles inflatable watercraft. The company rents 110 slips and is in the process of building up the eroded spit of land that protects its outer dock area to construct additional slips for owners on a long waiting list.

CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Said Glenn, “A lot of our customers have been around for a long time because this is a family business. We treat them as part of our family.”

Their oldest customer is Joe Stepnowski, 80, of Southold, who has been a client of Goldsmith’s for more than four decades.

“When I got my first boat,” he said, “I bought it at the end of the boating season, and I didn’t have any place to put it. I went to a couple of other marinas to see about putting it there for the rest of the year, and the price was really high. I came down and saw Skip, and he told me to put the boat in and don’t worry about it. He said, ‘If you have the boat next year and you want to come in here, then we’ll discuss money.’ ”

Four decades later, Stepnowski remains loyal to the business.

“They treat you like a customer, not a number,” he said. “They’re very knowledgeable.”

The kind of positive feedback that current customers voice for Skip and his sons started with the company founder.

Lieblein, of Port of Egypt, said his father got to know Alvah Sr. when he bought the marina in 1946 with his two brothers.

“When my dad bought the place, he needed some engines and he went to Alvah and he said, ‘I’d like to be able to put motors on my rowboats but I’m kind of stretched for cash right now,’ ” Lieblein said. “So Alvah said to him, ‘I’ll tell you what, Bill: I’ll order your 10 engines and you start renting them out and just give me the rental money until you’ve paid them off.’ We eventually started selling Johnson motors, so we’ve been ‘friendly competitors’ for many, many years. We’ve helped each other out in times of need.”

The family’s laid-back management style also tends to keep employees around. Mark Hodun, 56, of Riverhead, has worked two stints at the boat shop: initially for 13 years starting in the mid-1980s, and, after leaving to work at another marina, he returned 12 years ago.

“I do a little bit of everything,” he said. “They are easy to work for. There are other places where they are on you all the time. I’ve been here long enough that they know what I can do.”

And 100 years on, the question now is, who will continue the family tradition into the next century?

Glenn has two sons, Landon and Reid, 15 and 13 respectively, who have worked at the marina pumping gas and doing other chores.

As to the question of whether they will take over the business someday, Glenn replied: “I think it’s there for them if they want it. But, at the same time, they should keep their options open.”