Palmer School graduate students, Aliki and Olena, scanning the Arthur Greene glass plate negatives at our headquarters in Cold Spring Harbor.

Last year, Preservation Long Island was fortunate to receive a service grant from the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University, CW Post as part of their “Digitizing Local History Sources” project funded by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. Over the course of two semesters, Palmer School graduate students scanned and created metadata for hundreds of glass plate negatives taken by Port Jefferson photographer, Arthur Smedley Greene (1867–1955). Preservation Long Island is pleased to announce that hundreds of the images are now available for public browsing on Preservation Long Island’s own digital collections website: preservationlongisland.historyit.com! 

Arthur Greene’s photos are a treasure-trove of historical information, depicting local townscapes, businesses, landmarks, and scenic vistas at the turn of the 20th century when the arrival of new technologies like telephones, electricity, and automobiles began to transform everyday life on Long Island.

Click HERE to learn about our Image Rights & Research Policy.

Arthur Greene (1867–1955). Photograph of Port Jefferson, 1906. Glass plate negative. Preservation Long Island, 2011.3.24. To keep track of his photographs, Greene wrote a number, the subject or location, and his name on each negative. Images like this one were printed on mass-produced postcards.

 

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