Perkins Carriage House (The Yellow Barn), 330 Court Street, Riverhead, New York 11901

Narrator: Clara Perkins, (1892-1934, daughter of John R. and Alice O. Perkins); voiced by Cindy Clifford.

Hi, Welcome to the Perkins Carriage House – also known as The Yellow Barn.

I am Clara Perkins and I was born and raised on this property with my sister Alice and two brothers, Edward and George. Our grandfather John Perkins immigrated to Fishkill, New York from Bath, England about 1812. Then in 1828 he moved from there to Riverhead when he was 28 years old and established a woolen mill here on the Peconic River at what is now Upper Mills. Our grandfather even made uniforms for the Union army in the Civil War. He also came up with a process of treating the wool to make it waterproof, which made his product extremely desirable by seaman and the railroad workers alike. He ran the woolen mills until he died in 1866. Unfortunately, that secret process died with him. Our father, John R. Perkins and our uncle J. Henry Perkins, continued to the mill after their father’s death – up to about 1900.

Our father built a beautiful house here, one of the most imposing in Riverhead.

It had a mansard roof, just like the Yellow Barn – marking it as Second Empire style. That was a popular Victorian style that traced its roots back to the work of Baron Haussmann in Paris during the empire of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1871. The house was painted yellow, just like our Yellow Barn that you see here today.

Before the library demolished it to make way for its current building, a local artist, Ralph Fanning painted this marvelous portrait of the house.

Do you want to know a secret? My sister Alice was in poor health and was bedridden for some time which allowed me the opportunity to secretly carry out my clandestine hobby… refinishing old furniture, and where did I do this you may ask? Why in the Yellow Barn of course! SHHHH! My family didn’t know I was doing this! I would drive around in our car and find old, used furniture, pick it up and quietly drive my car into the Yellow Barn and secretly have someone bring it to the upstairs of the barn for me, where I refinished it. My family was very happy with all the furniture we already had since, honestly, we didn’t want for anything. But, I just loved having a secret hobby that was all my own. The privacy that the Yellow Barn gave me, afforded me the opportunity to carry out my hidden pleasure and I was certainly grateful for this secret hideaway.

Behind the Yellow Barn I had an “old world garden.” It had four old beautiful apple trees, meandering paths, all kinds of old roses, bulbs, ground cover and flowering shrubs and such. It was lacking in form but had a certain mysterious quality about it. I even had a secret bench hidden away in one of the wild hedges. When I sat on this bench, no one could see me.

My brother Edward was a physician in Harlem, New York. He had a fascination with holly. He grew them from the berries on the wreaths people give him during the Christmas season in Harlem and brought them out here to plant. There are still some here on the property today. Our brother George lived across the street on the river and was the senior member of the firm Perkins & Co. and he was also the senior warden of Grace Church. In our wills, my sister Alice and I left our land, our house and our carriage house for a public library, just as our mother Alice O. Perkins did for the Suffolk County Historical Society Building in her last will and testament years ago.

Thank you kindly for visiting the Perkins Carriage House – your probably call it the Yellow Barn – and please feel free to return at any time. You have an open invitation.

Script written by:

Jim Provencher
Local History Coordinator Riverhead Free Library
330 Court Street
Riverhead, New York 11901

Bibliography:

Interviewed by Norval Dwyer on December 07, 1967.

Oral History Taped Interview with Helen Raynor Hannah.

Excerpt- pgs. 21-24.

Chapman Publishing Company. 1896. Portrait and biographical record of Suffolk County (Long Island) New York. Chapman Publishing Co.

Hannah, Helen Raynor (1946, January 30). Grace Episcopal church in the town of Riverhead: an historical sketch of seventy-five years, 1870-1945. The County Review, pp. 9,11.

Hannah, H. (1945). Grace Episcopal Church in the town of Riverhead, Long Island, New York: An historical sketch of seventy-five years, 1870-1945. [Pamphlet]. Riverhead: Grace Episcopal Church.