8. Long Island Museum
Although temporarily closed, the Long Island Museum along Route 25A is an American art, history, and carriage museum that preserves Long Island artifacts. The museum was founded in 1939 as the Suffolk Museum by Ward Melville, who established it with his wife Dorothy, prominent naturalist Robert Cushman Murphy, a well-regarded local doctor Winifred Curtis, and insurance broker O.C. Lempfert. Like the Stony Brook Village Center, the museum evokes a New England village with historic buildings dating back to 1874.
The museum contains over 50,000 artifacts divided between art and archives, history, and carriage. The museum contains about 450 paintings and an addition 2,000 works on paper, with featured artists including Louis Comfort Tiffany, William Merritt Chase, and Charles Henry Miller. The museum also houses the largest collection of works by notable artist William Sidney Mount, who lived in Stony Brook. Among the museum’s history artifacts is a collection of over 10,000 historic textiles from the 18th century to present, folk art waterfowl decoys, and indigenous furniture. The carriage collection features about 25,000 non-vehicular artifacts and about 200 horse-drawn vehicles, including the Tally-Ho Rail Coach (1875), Gypsy Wagon (1860-1885), and Grace Darling Omnibus (1880).