Huntington Town officials plan to expand village green space

A plan more than eight decades in the making to add more green space to downtown Huntington is heading toward completion.

Town officials expect to acquire all four homes on Sabbath Day Path, a street that runs between Heckscher Park and the historic Village Green, and eventually demolish them to increase parkland downtown. The move also would essentially connect the two green spaces, divided only by the street, on which the town eventually plans to limit traffic.

The homes are currently occupied. Officials plan to purchase two of them from willing sellers. They expect the two others, at 20 and 30 Sabbath Day Path, to be donated, unoccupied, to the town by year's end by Old Huntington Green Inc., which owns them, Town Supervisor Ed Smyth said. Once the town possesses all four homes, it will move to include the parcels in an open-space plan.

Smyth said the plan, while not technically an expansion of either the park or the green, would increase public green space in the area.

“Having open space is always a benefit and the two parks complement each other perfectly,” Smyth said, adding the Village Green "will always remain a low-use passive park for residents to quietly enjoy."

A mission nearly complete

The town will hold a public hearing Feb. 11 to consider purchasing the privately owned 18 Sabbath Day Path for $525,000 and 26 Sabbath Day Path for $585,000 at the recommendation of the Environmental Open Space and Park Fund Advisory Committee, according to town documents.

Town officials said after the public hearing and a vote by the town board to approve the purchases, the town attorney’s office will schedule the closings on the properties.

Once the town closes on them, it will begin plans to demolish the houses and begin discussions with first responders about making Sabbath Day Path an emergency-vehicle-only thruway, Smyth said. The street, which runs from Main Street to Park Avenue, is often used by those vehicles to get to nearby Huntington Hospital.

Paul Warburgh, president of Old Huntington Green Inc., a civic organization established in 1938, said if all goes as planned, that will complete the mission of the organization when it was established.

“It has been a mission since our inception to acquire and donate open space so we can join Heckscher Park and the Village Green together to be used as a park in perpetuity,” Warburgh said.

Generations of open space

Heckscher Park is popular landmark in the village that includes an art museum, a pond outlined by a walking path and a refurbished playground. 

The Village Green, originally an open public space, dates back centuries and is the oldest settled area in Huntington, town documents show. As early as 1663, settlers began to keep their cattle on the parcel. During the Revolutionary War, English forces used the area as a training ground and a supply depot, the documents said.

Town Historian Robert Hughes said during the 1920s, the Village Green was in terrible shape, with many people using it as a dumping ground. A group of residents formed The Committee on the Preservation of Old Huntington, the precursor organization to Old Huntington Green Inc. The group’s first goal was to clean up the site.

Eventually the group decided it also wanted to preserve open space and historic structures, so it began purchasing properties in the area around the Green.

For example, in the 1930s and '40s, the group purchased four lots along Main Street between Sabbath Day Path and the Green, turning them over to the town in 1957, Hughes said.

Heckscher Park was relatively new, he said, when the plan was formed to create large open spaces in the heart of Huntington. The park had been established around 1917.

“So this purchase would be the last step in a plan that has been in the works for at least 70 years,” Hughes said. “There’s nothing like patience.”

The Feb. 11 public hearing will be at 6 p.m. at Town Hall, 100 Main St.