Reeve Barnes House

206 Roanoke Avenue

Narrator: Cora Reeve Barnes (1865 - 1943); voiced by Jan McGoey

Hi, this is Cora Reeve Barnes. I was born just at the end of the Civil War and lived much of my life in this beautiful house at 206 Roanoke Avenue on the corner of First Street. My father, well-to-do banker Howell Monroe Reeve, was one of the founders of a private bank that became the Suffolk County Trust Company. You may have noticed the bank’s handsome headquarters on Main Street just east of the Star Confectionary. It was just a block away from here, a nice short walk to work for my father. 

This was an old house when my father bought it. It was probably built in the 1850s by a Riverhead merchant named Jeffery S. Hutchinson. Originally, it looked much like the Wells-Robinson house catty-corner across the street. Like most Italianates, it had ornate brackets under the broad eves and a fancy cupola up on top.

I was an only child, so when my father died in 1912, he left me his entire estate. I was 47 years old at the time and had never married. Never met anyone that was up to my father’s standards. But, just two years after his death, I married for the first time – to a 57-year-old widower, Col. Walter F. Barnes. Would you believe? He was born in New Jersey but grew up in Brooklyn. He took over his father's furniture manufacturing business in Manhattan and made a fortune there. He was also retired from the New York National Guard, where he rose to the rank of adjutant general of the 2d Brigade.

One of the first things Col. Barnes and I did was totally modernize the house. It was pretty old-fashioned. We tried to make it look Arts & Crafts, the latest fad in those days. We took off all of those fuddy-duddy scroll brackets and replaced them with modern square ones. We also added the front porch and some other Arts & Crafts details.

The Colonel and I traveled widely, seeing many parts of the United States as well as Europe and the Far East. We were amongst the the most prominent citizens of Riverhead.

In 1923 I donated 25 acres on Long Island Sound that was developed as a public beach and named Reeve Park in memory of my father. Would you believe that was the very first park that the town owned? The town didn’t take very good care of it and didn’t build the road they promised, so I had to get the legislature to pass a special act giving it back to me in 1929. That sure got the town board’s attention, and they soon built the promised road!

Col. Barnes was also active in the Historical Society and for many years was its president as well as the Riverhead Town Historian. I was a generous benefactor, leaving funds for the two side wings of the Suffolk County Historical Society.

Those wings were part of the original plan, but couldn’t be built until the historical society received my legacy. They really make the place look much better, don’t you think?

The Colonel and I are buried in an elaborate marble mausoleum in the Riverhead Cemetery, the only above-ground resting place in the cemetery.