Downtown Riverhead Historic Trail offers new insights into slices of town history

With the touch of a button on a smartphone, anyone can see and listen to the hidden history of Riverhead’s most famous downtown landmarks and pioneers via a new historic trail that can be walked online and in person.

The Downtown Riverhead Historic Trail took about two years to create through research, voice recordings and interviews, according to Richard Wines, chairman of Riverhead’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. It was officially unveiled Oct. 20 at a ribbon cutting at the Suffolk Theatre on East Main Street.

The walkable and virtual trail features scannable QR codes at 39 town stops and stretches from the landmark East Lawn building on East Main Street in the east to the Suffolk County Historical Society in the west. Wines said he hopes the trail will not only attract people to Riverhead but also pay tribute to its often-forgotten history.

“We want to highlight the town’s history and make it interesting, but also to make coming downtown interesting,” he said. “Hopefully, when they’re wandering around, they’ll see these little sights and hopefully learn something, because the stories are interesting.”

There are no guides for the trail, which is available to walk on foot 24/7, and is free. Visitors must scan the QR codes to hear the history of each stop.

In 2019, the commission was considering putting plaques on many of the town’s historic places, according to Wines. At some point he said he recalled a trail featuring QR codes at Hallockville Museum Farm in Riverhead that highlighted sustainability and thought of recreating something similar in Riverhead.

Wines then spent two years interviewing residents with a connection to local landmarks or famed local historical figures. In most other instances, up to 31 voice actors played the part of historical figures, with research provided through Riverhead’s historian’s office, the Suffolk County Historical Society and old newspapers on file at the Riverhead Free Library.

Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, the head librarian for the Suffolk County Historical Society, contributed research for the project on two stops: the historical society building on Court Street and Odd Fellows Lodge on Roanoke Avenue. The lodge was once the home of Syrena Stackpole, a Riverhead native and suffragist who in 1931 became the first woman in Suffolk County to hold public office when she was elected justice of the peace and to the town board.

Polhemus-Annibell said she hopes trail visitors will gain a greater appreciation of Stackpole’s accomplishments.

“She really was quite the woman. She was ahead of her time,” Polhemus-Annibell said.

Cindy Clifford, co-founder of the Heart of Riverhead Civic Association, did voiceovers for the project as Clara Perkins, daughter of prominent businessman John R. Perkins, on whose Court Street property was built the Perkins Carriage House. The property was known as “The Yellow Barn” and is now a town-designated landmark used by the Riverhead Free Library. Clifford said the trail will give visitors a glimpse into a slice of the town’s history that they may not have known otherwise.

“What I loved about this project is that there are all these buildings in Riverhead that you don’t necessarily notice, and if you do, you certainly don’t know the backstory…it gives an extra depth to what Riverhead offers here,” Clifford said.