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For 58 years, Library Hall in Mattituck was a hub of activity, a beacon that drew the community and held great personal significance for the scores of residents who spent time there. 

For 87-year-old Betty Kalin, the musty and oddly comforting smell of the old books that once lined the turn-of-the-century building’s shelves stands out most in her memory.

“Isn’t that funny?” the Mattituck native said recently, a hint of wistfulness in her voice. “But I loved it.”

On the evening of Feb. 16, 1905, back when Theodore Roosevelt was president, a dance was held in Mattituck to celebrate the opening of Library Hall. The two-story shingled building, boasting tall arched windows and dark wood paneling inside, had been erected a year earlier at the southeast corner of Westphalia Road and Pike Street, directly across from the Long Island Rail Road Station in what is now a parking lot. Back then, the hall was known as Lupton Public Library in honor of its benefactor, Frank Lupton, a Mattituck native who made his fortune as a New York City publisher.

That night’s festivities included songs by the Mattituck Quintette, speeches from local church leaders, music by the Eclipse Orchestra and an exhausting assortment of 25 waltzes, two-steps, grand marches and quadrilles.

According to John Traversa, who wrote an article for the Peconic Bay Shopper in the late 1970s called “The Great Mattituck Hall,” that winter evening “set the pace for years to come and the hall became a center of culture and entertainment on the North Fork.”

Jeffrey Walden, associate director of the Mattituck-Laurel Library, agreed.

“For a period of time, [the hall] was the center of all community activity,” he said.

The library had two rooms on the first floor — one for reading and one for meetings — where groups like the Lecture Course Association and Dramatic Association met. The library was manned from 1926 to 1963 by Catherine Phillips, a dark-haired, bespectacled woman whose name still easily rolls off the tongues of locals like 73-year-old Ray Nine.

“She was a nice woman,” Nine said. “When I was probably 10 years old, I used to work in her garden and weed it for her. I made 25 cents an hour. Put some of it in the bank, believe it or not.”

Like Kalin, he vividly remembers the library’s distinctive odor.

“There was something about the smell,” he said with a slight chuckle. “It was different than anything else and that always amused me.”

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Librarian Catherine Phillips, in an undated photo, was in charge at Library Hall for many years. (Credit: Courtesy)

Elsewhere on the main floor were, in various years, two doctor’s offices, a dentist’s office and a drug store. The original Mattituck Bank operated from the hall in the years before World War I and the American Mechanics union used to hold its annual banquets there.

The building’s second floor could accommodate up to 800 people and featured a basketball court where the Mattituck Giants played. There was also a small movie theater.

“It wasn’t like Loew’s or anything,” said Kalin, who recalled seeing Shirley Temple films there. “They had a projector and everything. I remember it used to be 25 cents.”

Tragedy stuck the hall in March 1939, when a flash fire tore through the building, causing enough damage — between $5,000 and $6,000, or around $91,500 in today’s dollars — to make its trustees seriously consider moving elsewhere. Aside from the money needed to repair the structure, they had other cause to move as well.

The world by then was a much different place than it had been in 1905, when a thousand people were said to have trekked through the snow in ball gowns and tuxedos to attend the hall’s dedication. World War I had ravaged the nation and World War II was fast approaching. More people had automobiles, diverting traffic away from the train tracks near Pike Street and onto Route 25.

Library Hall held on for nearly a quarter-century after the fire but, as Traversa noted, it became more and more difficult to maintain the building. By 1960, he wrote, “The deterioration was all too visible: There seemed to be a consensus that the once glorious hall had now become a dangerous fire trap.”

Incredibly, Nine still remembers the names of the men who came to Library Hall with their wrecking ball one day in 1963 — perhaps, he said, because it was the year he got married.

“Two contractors tore it down,” he said. “Howard Wells and Edward Brush.”

Kalin remembers that day, too. She was living in Greenport when her mother called her with the news.
“My mother said, ‘Oh goodness, they tore down Library Hall!’” she recalled.

On occasion, Kalin said, she finds herself on Pike Street, where the structure once stood, and is struck by the sheer emptiness of the site.

“I always associated that corner with Library Hall,” she said. “It was there forever and ever. It looks so barren without it.”

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Editor’s Note: This is part of an occasional series about North Fork landmarks that have vanished from our landscape.

 

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