Program

NYS Historic

Subject

Arts & Culture, People, Site

Location

975 Middle Country Rd, Middle Island, NY 11953, USA

Lat/Long

40.885412589905, -72.932057073933

Grant Recipient

The Longwood Society for Historic Preservation

Artist Lake, located in the hamlet of Middle Island in Suffolk County, New York, was formerly called Glover’s Pond as early as 1838. However, by 1871, its name had changed to Artist Lake. The December 30, 1871 edition of the South Side Signal, published in Babylon, New York, published a letter to the editor that stated Artist Lake had been known as a “large pond” only three year prior and that the surrounding land was at the time being developed into plots to be used to build homes:

“With the last two years there has been purchased, in the vicinity of the lake, several hundred acres of land in plots of from ten to forty acres each, by N.Y. citizens, for country homes.”

The letter to the editor of the South Side Signal continued:

“Among the most noted, I would mention the place of A. Chappell, a noted artist formerly of Brooklyn. His house is situated on an eminence from which one gets a fine view of the Lake and surrounding country. The arrangement of his house and grounds, when completed, will display a degree of taste unequaled on the Island.”

The artist Alonzo Chappel (1828-1887) was recorded as residing in Middle Island in the 1870 United State Census, along with fellow artist Ole Peter Hansen Balling. While Balling would relocate a few years later, Chappel lived in his Middle Island home near Artist Lake until his death in 1887. Chappel was a prolific painter and illustrator of American historical scenes. Among the many works of history that include his artwork are John Schroeder’s Life and Times of Washington (1857), Henry B. Dawson’s Battles of the United States (1858), J.A. Spencer’s History of the United States (1858), and E.A. Duyckinck’s History of the War for the Union (1861-1865), National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (1862), and Lives and Portraits of the Presidents of the United States (1865).

Chappel’s obituary published in the December 7, 1887 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted that he died at his residence on Artist Lake. Of his longstanding career as an artist and the home he created in Middle Island, his obituary said the following:

“He was one of the helpers to form the Brooklyn Art Union. He was a member of the Graham Art School. He suggested the first meeting for the formation of the Brooklyn Academy of Design and was its first vice president. He had always been a hard worker, and not without profit. His home, aside from his art work, was all the world to him; his cottage picturesque in every outline; fruit trees and flower beds lined his walks with artistic taste, turning what was almost a wilderness into a garden of Eden. … No artist ever painted historical pictures with more truthfulness in the costumes and implements of civil and military life than Alonzo Chappel.”

Links

• Alonzo Chappel: The Complete Works