Historic Views of Old Sag Harbor

Sag Harbor’s William Garrett Howard (1857-1915) was the son of a Greenport photographer. He followed in his father’s footsteps and in 1881, when about 24 years old, moved to Sag Harbor and opened his own photography studio. There, he spent the next several decades documenting the people and places of his adopted village.

On view now at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum is “Historic Sag Harbor: Turn of the Century Photographs by William Garrett Howard,” an exhibition that will remain on view through September. The show features a number of Howard’s local photographs made from the original glass plate negatives. The existence of Howard’s glass plates were unknown — lost for over 100 years — until they were stumbled upon in an old Sag Harbor barn during the summer of 2020 when Randy Kolhoff, owner of Black Swan Antiques on Main Street, was summoned to clear out the barn’s contents. Kolhoff has spent the last three years laboriously cleaning and restoring the glass plates so that modern digital copies could be made, revealing Howard’s astonishingly beautiful and historically important images.

Howard’s photographs capture a village in the midst of reinventing itself. With the demise of its whaling fleet in the mid-1870s, Sag Harborites tried a number of different new enterprises in hopes of bringing economic stability. Most of these attempts failed until the arrival of a watch case factory in the 1880s, which helped Sag Harbor transition from a defunct whaling port into a blue-collar factory town and summer destination.

Howard’s photographs capture this “new” Sag Harbor at the dawn of the “American Century” and they allow us to revel in the beauty and charm of iconic village locations we all know, as well as to never-before-seen locations that are thrilling to discover.

Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum is at 200 Main Street, Sag Harbor. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (last entry at 4 p.m.) Visit sagharborwhalingmuseum.org for more details.