History

  • Island History

    Block Island Historical Society
    Fri, Sep 2
    As summer winds down, the Block Island Historical Society acts as a time machine for guests to escape the hectic activity outside. Visitors are welcome to visit the Gallery and Museum Shop or to enjoy sitting in the rocking chairs on the recently restored front porch. Inside the Museum, the Block...

  • A Visit to the Bait Shop at Twin Maples is a Step Back in Time

    Fraser Lang
    Sun, Jul 31
    The first thing you notice is the rotary dial phone on the wall still very much in operation. Other than new lures and the piles of the popular “Eat Fish” t-shirts, not much has changed in more than six decades. It’s the old Block Island and there is nothing to indicate a looming transformation...

  • Salt Marsh Exploration

    Wed, Jul 27
    BIT Category: 
    Community
    A salt marsh adventure for kids and their parents. Meet at Andy’s Way, off Corn Neck Road. (Kids need to wear water shoes and parents must attend.) Co-sponsored by Block Island Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy.

  • Island History

    Fri, Jul 1
    There’s much to celebrate this summer at the Block Island Historical Society. Plans for the fourth phase of renovations to the museum building are being readied for a summer fundraising campaign. Visitors are welcome into the gallery and onto the porch, both of which have been newly restored. The...

  • History's First Draft - 1913

    Tue, Jun 9
    BIT Category: 
    Features, Inactive Columns
    DEMAND GROWING FOR ADEQUATE STREET LIGHTING AND BETTER POLICE PROTECTION If Block Island is to be expected to make good as a summer resort, to the extent that its natural resources deserve, it must be provided with certain reforms and improvements. The first and most important requirements are...

  • Michael Oppenheimer: Relaxing on Island, Reflecting on Choices and Cautioning the World

    Gloria S. Redlich
    Tue, Sep 2
    Though it’s been many years since I first sat down with Michael Oppenheimer on the open porch of his West Side island home, finding him there several weeks ago felt quite natural. The familiarity of the setting allows us to fall easily into conversation while looking out at rolling hillsides...
  • I Tried It!

    Full Moon Paddle

    Brooke Hammarskjold
    Tue, Sep 2
    On July 12th, as many admired the super moon (a full moon that appears even larger than usual because of its closeness to the earth) from their houses, I was lucky enough to be out on the Great Salt Pond, part of a group of kayakers on a tour led by Corrie Heinz, owner of Pond and Beyond Kayak...
  • Featured House

    The Captain Faile House

    Paula Taylor
    Fri, Aug 29
    The Captain Faile House sits on the ocean side of Spring Street north of the Southeast Lighthouse. The Cushman family loves this house which was built in 1925, but it is not their first residence on the island. The family history here goes back to World War II when grandfather Bert first learned...

  • Under a Pink Pearl Moon

    Judy Tierney
    Thu, Jul 31
    On the island with three friends in the house, I was looking for something interesting to do at night during their visits besides the usual drinks with dinner or a movie, and while I was thinking, I happened to focus on a postcard lying on the dining room table in a large pile of recent mail. Maybe...

  • The Bird Lady of Block Island, Miss Elizabeth Dickens

    Mon, Jul 28
    Kim Gaffett and the Ocean View Foundation’s bird walks and bird banding demonstrations are two of many island traditions that are born of a rich legacy, that of Miss Elizabeth Dickens. Historian Robert Downie wrote about that legacy for the weekly Block Island Times and Edie Blane added her own...

  • My First Time

    Judy Tierney
    Mon, Jun 9
    In our house we mark the passage of our lives not just by our jobs or child rearing experiences, but by where we live and what we drive. One of our automobile eras was that of the El Camino, a Chevrolet that was a compromise between a truck and a car. Behind the sleek front seat compartment was a...

  • The Block Island Club Celebrates its 50th Anniversary

    Brooke Hammarskjold
    Mon, Jun 9
    This summer, the Block Island Club will celebrate 50 years of providing recreational activities to its members. The club, a not-for-profit run by a Board of Governors, is situated on the Great Salt Pond, and offers its members lessons in tennis, arts, swimming, sailing and other water sports. In...

  • Walking with Leonard

    Judy Tierney
    Mon, Jun 9
    I first met Leonard Perfido last spring after he and his wife Ruth returned from a Great Ape Encounter tour in Africa. Like them, I am intrigued by the works of gorilla researcher Dian Fossey and chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall, but unlike them, I have never entertained the notion of trekking to...

  • Memories of the Mansion

    Martha Ball
    Mon, Jun 9
    “I try to have one project every winter,” Highway Department Head Mike Shea says, quickly qualifying it with: “Of course, it’s all weather dependent.” The comment brings to mind the clean-up of superstorm Sandy, winter storm Nemo, and several blasts in-between, which consumed their time last winter...

  • Kayak for Conservation

    Corrie Heinz
    Mon, Jun 9
    The Great Salt Pond is Corrie Heinz’s home away from home. As the owner/operator of Pond and Beyond Kayak, she’s out on the pond whenever the weather allows, so she knows the ins and the outs of the place and all the ecosystems and subcultures it holds. She grew up out here, went to school here...
    corrie heinz, pond and beyond kayak

  • A is for Alphabet Book

    Lisa Stiepock
    Mon, Jun 9
    Gloria Hall Daubert wrote a book. To those who know her primarily as the longtime (29 years and counting) bartender at Winfield’s, the news come as a bit of a surprise. But the truth is she’s been pondering the book almost as long as she’s worked at Winfield’s. “It’s a bucket list thing,” says...
    gloria hall daubert
  • What’s New

    A sense of wonder in the digital age

    By Lars Trodson
    Thu, Jun 5
    There is a timeless feeling when you walk into the Empire Theatre on Block Island. It isn’t just the vintage décor — the old wood floor, the high-beamed ceiling, or the classic sign that hangs over the back of the hall. The one that advertises roller skating for 30 cents. The Empire is one of the...

  • A Brief History of the Empire Theatre Building

    Robert M. Downie
    Thu, Feb 20
    They came ashore with the paraphernalia of their journey, looking to Block Island for respite and a bit of refreshment after the sea voyage. Their destination was the site of the Empire Theatre, where also perhaps, as a bonus to their main purpose, entertainment might be found meeting the quaint...

  • Block Island Short Walks

    Judy Tierney
    Thu, Feb 20
    Last week I fell in love with a book about the power of walking. “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed is the story of her trek over the Pacific Crest Trail from southern California through Oregon. Though I have never trekked over mountains for long distances in great hardship, I do love to take walks and have...

  • A Community of Year-Rounders

    Brooke Ortel
    Thu, Feb 20
    The bare, windswept shores of the island appear in sharp relief against the iron-grey sea. Block Island is stunning, even in the depths of winter’s grasp: an unspoiled haven of natural beauty. On such a day, it might appear bereft of human habitation. Yet Block Island in winter is not simply the...

  • Block Island’s 1885 Pantry

    Robert M. Downie
    Tue, Dec 3
    While writers in big cities in the 1800s wrote wistfully of their imagined utopias, Block Islanders were living in one. Some of the 1,500 men, women and children here sustained themselves from the sea, some from the land, and many from both. The island’s farming statistics in 1885 listed 19 kinds...

  • Developing Block Island since 1970: Behind the lens with Malcolm Greenaway

    Sara Dunleavy Berge
    Mon, Nov 18
    Malcolm Greenaway laughs in disbelief as he shows me a recent printout from the internet he is posting to the door, which lists Greenaway Gallery as the leading attraction of Block Island, surpassing the Mohegan Bluffs. “Who knows who writes these things,” he chuckles. Whether ranking Malcolm’s...
  • Living History

    Early beginnings as a fishing and farming community

    Fri, Jul 12
    Block Island’s history is a rich one, encompassing Native American tribes, Revolutionary War heroes, legendary shipwrecks, and its emergence in the late 1800s as one of New England’s premiere summer attractions. Learn more about the island’s history by visiting the Historical Society Museum and...