5/18/2023 0 Comments Tiny falling hearts gifVentura and Steve Rotella, the president of the society’s board of directors, sat in a room of the Vail House on Monday to explain their plans. “The plan is to solicit ideas to put an addition on the back and side of the Vail House that would be home to our archives, which are the real stars of our collection,” said Alison Ventura, the society’s executive director. Next year, the society will celebrate its 80th anniversary. OHS was formed in 1944 by the historically minded George Latham, a member of the hamlet’s farming community, who also assembled many of the buildings on the campus. Vail House is one of seven handsome buildings on the 8-acre OHS campus on Village Lane. On March 20, the society mailed out a request for qualifications to architectural firms “for the conversion, adaptive reuse and expansion of Vail House into the OHS collections center and administrative offices,” according to a news release. This month, the society took the first steps towards what members have long wanted: a larger, temperature- and humidity-controlled space for the society’s remarkable archives that is more accessible to the public. And she knows they need to be preserved for future generations. Folk, who is the society’s collections manager and the Southold Town historian, has worked in this office for 20 years and knows how special the estimated 60,000 documents, diaries, maps, pieces of artwork and whaling records are. “What is here,” she said, pointing out the labeled boxes on shelves with the pride of an historian who cherishes records of the past, “goes back to the 1600s and is the heart and soul of this community. Every square inch of shelf space is packed, and navigating the narrow aisles is a challenge. (Credit: David Benthal)Īmy Folk’s tiny office at Oysterponds Historical Society is a treasure trove of Orient and East Marion history. The Oysterponds Historical Society grounds on Village Lane in Orient.
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