Exclusive: VanderbiltCupRaces.com and Cradle of Aviation to Digitize Thousands of Previously Unpublished Long Island Historic Photos
I am pleased to announce that VanderbiltCupRaces.com and the Cradle of Museum have reached an agreement to digitize thousands of negatives and glass plates that will further document the history of Long Island .
Partially supported by an educational grant from Roz and Howard Kroplick, previously unpublished negatives and glass plates from the John Drennan Collection and Dade Brothers Collection are being scanned, digitized, documented and uploaded to the Cradle of Aviation section of the New York Heritage Digital Collections.
A total of 714 photos from the Drennan Collection are now available for public viewing. Moreover, the entire Beutenmuller Family Collection, which has been donated to the Cradle of Aviation by Jennifer Robinson, will be made available later this year for public viewing as a result of this agreement.
VanderbiltCupRaces.com will also be posting relevant aerials and spectacular historic photos from the Cradle of Aviation collections. A few examples are below.
Get ready for some future amazing Mystery Fotos!
Enjoy,
Howard Kroplick
Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis (May 1927)
The Spirit of St. Louis at Hangar 16 at Curtiss Field with police officials in May 1927 . Police commissioner Abram Skidmore can be seen at the right foreground.
The Spirit of St. Louis over Long Island.
Charles Lindbergh and Clarence Chamberlin at the Garden City Hotel in May 1927.
The Making of the Spirit of St. Louis film at Zahn's Airport, Amityville (August 7, 1956)
Charles Lindbergh (left) and producer Leland Haywood supervising the filming of the take-off recreation of the replica Spirit of St. Louis at Zahn's Airport. This scene was used in the 1957 film Spirit of St. Louis.
The flying scenes were shot at Zahn's Airport. Who knew?
Roosevelt Field Inn (circa 1935)
Art deco bar with a mural by Eric Sloane.
The POW camp at Mitchel Field
Circa 1944
Does anyone know where the POW camp was located at Mitchel Field?
General Dwight Eisenhower arrives from Paris at Mitchel Field (November 3, 1951)
Aerials
The Roslyn Viaduct over Hempstead Harbor upon completion (November 1949). View looking northwest. The Blue Spruce Inn can be seen in the foreground.
My alma mater East Meadow High School (August 1959)
Jones Beach on Labor Day (September 1, 1958). View looking east.
Comments
WOW - words escape me to state how absolutely wonderful that is to read the news about how all those period images will be saved and made available for so many people to view. HISTORY not only PRESERVED but SHARED as it should be - Long Island PROUD!
In this era of health crisis it is a ray of hope to see something being accomplished that will make so many people happy. Thanks to all involved in this effort and especially to Howard and Roz for the funds to do so.
nice group of photos, one of a seaplane in Port Jefferson may be Bob Foggs , another photo of it at a NH seaplane base
This is the first I am hearing that POWs, probably German and Italian, were held at Mitchel Field during the war. Fascinating. I am going to guess that they were in transit to more isolated rural facilities and were only temporarily housed at Mitchel after arriving on boats in NYC. Then again, in 1944, Mitchel Field was pretty much rural. How did they get out to Mitchel Field? An intriguing thought is that they could have been shipped east by the LIRR. Can’t wait for more pictures from the newly released collection.
Bravo!
This is wonderful news. I’m looking forward to seeing the photos. I feel a special bond with the Cradle museum as my late dad, John Prete, worked as a docent at the museum after he retired from a career fixing airplanes. Thank you Howard and Roz!
Pertaining to the POW camp at Mitchel Field, I believe it was on the western edge near the Camp Mills section. Here is an article from Newsday of 1945 detailing the departure of approx. 300 POWs being sent back to European camps as the Mitchel Field camp was being closed. Interesting for sure!
And great news about the digitizing project! Thanks Howard and Roz!
I was aware of the POW’s being housed at the Edgewood facility in Brentwood but
not at Mitchell Field. I look forward to future historic news. So glad to hear about
the digitizing of the collections! Thankyou Howard and Roz!
I remember German PoWs working in farm fields in eastern Nassau and western Suffolk ca. 1945. They wore their own old grey-green uniforms and field caps, not GIs. Is that a RR track at the right in the first PoW pic? Wow, HK; more seaplanes!
Hope there’s more about Weirs. There I am at Jones Beach - can’t quite make me out, though. As to the overall project, hurrah and thanks muchly, Roz and Howard!
Whoa, Nellie! Sorry to rain on your parade but Weirs is on lake Winnepesaukee in NH, http://weirsbeach.com/reasons-to-visit/location/travel-by-plane/the-weirs-seaplane-base/, as are those pix! Sam, III
How wonderful! Thanks and kudos to Roz and Howard for helping to preserve pictures from these collections.
More details concerning the POWs at Mitchel Field. The first detachment of POWs were received May 17, 1945 with the camp remaining open through March, 1946. POWs were housed in the old Camp Mills site to the west.
And yes, Sam, they were used on farms in the county.
Art, The POW photo, its reasonable to assume the POW encampment would not be located anywhere near the operational part of Mitchel Field. It was definitely located in the westerly part of the Field and I’m guessing with it’s own entrance from either Hempstead Turnpike and or today’s Oak Street. The buildings in the distant appear to be of residential nature . Based on the angle on the shadows, are we looking south toward Hempstead or west toward Garden City ? So, I place the encampment in the vicinity of the where the student housing buildings are located today.
Josh Stoff, curator at the Cradle of Aviation, informed me that the POW camp was located at the current location of the Garden City Center, 100 Quentin Roosevelt Boulevard.
I remember Bill Cruickshank relaying me a story about a German POW befriended her while she was roller skating near the Michel Field runways. That was the first I personally had heard about POWs in the area.
Oops! I meant to say his mother as a young girl who had been rollerskating. Brain moving too fast for typing fingers!
And huge thanks to Howard and Roz for making this whole thing happen!
There was more than one POW camp at Mitchel Field. Besides the one identified in the newspaper articles above for Germans in the vicinity of Camp Mills, there was also one for captured Italian POWs elsewhere on the Base environs.
I had heard it may have been in the Southeast corner of the property, North of Hempstead Turnpike and immediately West of Perimeter Road, adjacent to the Meadow Brook Golf Club (explaining the presence of electrified, barbed wire fencing along their common border).
Anyone know where it was located?
To: Lee Chambers, There was an article somewhere on this site that records the account of the keepers of the Motor Parkway toll lodge at the “Meadowbrook” entrance near Merrick ave. The child of the family somehow interacted with a German pow at a camp south of Hempstead turnpike but just west of Merrick ave, near where Kellenberg high school is today.
Thanks, David. Sounds like it would have been on the Santini Sub-Base.