In Colonial Times, a breach through Fire Island allowed ships to enter Bellport Bay from the Atlantic. Residents lit fires to guide them, a practice that lent itself to the name “Fire Place” for the Historic District in the Hamlet of Brookhaven.
The inlet, which has opened and closed over the years—most recently by Hurricane Sandy in 2012–was a boon to local commerce, affording the early settlers a direct route to the ocean. The Colonists supplied seafood, cattle, produce, and lumber to New York City and rendered the blubber of whales along the shore.
Presenting an essay on the area before the Fire Place Literary Club at the Brookhaven Free Library in 1933, resident Osborne Shaw delved into its history. “The survey of the town made in 1797 shows that Smith’s Inlet or New Inlet, now referred to as Old Inlet, was then open and opposite Fire Place Neck. There is much that can be assembled to show that the inlet was used frequently in early colonial days, and it is very probable that in order to guide the whaling crews, which were so numerous offshore in the later part of the 17th Century and early part of the 18th Century, and also when there was expected a vessel which might have to negotiate the inlet after dark, that fires would be built, probably at Woodhull’s Point, now called Long Point, at the mouth of the Connecticut River and that these fires would serve as a range light,” Shaw wrote.
According to the old timer, “The inlet lay about a southwest course from the point, and as it cut through the beach also on a southwest course, a light or fire on the point would very likely be seen through the inlet and out to sea and could thus be used to ‘make’ the inlet. Such a fire would also serve at night as a guide across the bay to the mouth of the Connecticut River.”
The entirety of Brookhaven Hamlet was formerly known as Fire Place, and at one time, the term was applied to the whole vicinity, including South Haven, where the grist, saw, and fulling mills are given on the town map of 1797 as Fire Place Mills, Shaw noted.
He did not favor changing the village's name to Brookhaven since it was confusing to name it after the township. “The unwise change of the name from Fire Place to Brookhaven occurred about 1871 when a group of modernizers, or would-be improvers, started an agitation to drop the ancient name,” Shaw wrote. “Hardly a worse name could have been chosen,” he concluded.
Part of Fire Place is Squassucks, which was stated in Tooker’s 1911 “Indian Place-Names on Long Island” as a contraction of Wessquassucks, the name of an Indian who inhabited the area. “Tooker analyses the word to mean a pot-maker—hence, we assume that Wessquassucks, the pot-maker, lived at or near Squassucks Point,” Shaw said. “I offer the suggestion that Wessquassuck may have had his firing place or kiln for his pottery in the vicinity and that his fire, once used as a beacon or guiding light, gave rise to the custom of lighting fires for the purpose and the fact that Fire Place Neck is almost always spoken of in the early records, not simply as Fire Place, but ‘the fire place,’ seems to strengthen the idea that I have just advanced.”
Whatever the origin of the name, it is found frequently in the early records of Brookhaven Town, Shaw went on to say in his presentation. “The first mention that I find of it is in Book I (of the early town records) under the date of 30 March 1675, where the entry states that Francis Muncy, before he died, exchanged his meadow share at the Fire Place with Samuel Dayton for the meadow at Sebomack near Smith Point.”
He goes on to cite other references to the name in the historical record:
- 18 May 1675, Abraham Dayton and Thomas Bearsley sell 18 barrels of whale oil “lying on the South Side of the Island at a place commonly called the fire place.”
- 25 May 1675, the town meeting voted to grant to Nicholas Chatwell and to Richard Southcott each some upland and “5 acres of meadow in the “Great Fly” at Fire Place provided they occupy the land before Christmas, but as their names do not appear again, they probably did not accept the gift under the conditions required.
- 30 July 1675, Richard Floyd trades his lot, No. 25, of meadow and upland in Fire Place with Joseph Davis for meadow at Unkechaug in Mastic.
Now known as the Fireplace Historic District, the area is recognized for its historical and architectural significance. First settled in 1664, the district encompasses a variety of structures, including residential homes, commercial buildings, and public spaces, many of which retain their architectural styles. This preservation allows visitors and residents to experience the ambiance of a 17th-century settlement.
A 13-acre portion of Fire Place along Carmen’s River has been maintained by the Brookhaven Village Association since 1946. It is nearly surrounded by the 2,550-acre Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge, a stunning expanse of preserved lands once inhabited by the ancient Unkechaugs. The landscape was created by the glacier that carved out Long Island more than 10,000 years ago.