Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society

By 1901 there were 22 telephone subscribers in Port Washington including the Hotel Renwick and Castle Gould which added service in 1900. Almost fifty years after the first telephone was installed in his store, Bayles reminisced about this new attraction in town: “Most of the time we just took messages and delivered them to people here in the village. Many’s the time I trotted out on the old mare we used for delivery work to give a message. Then when people came in to use the telephone we would have to tell them how it worked. Funny thing, most people would shout their heads off trying to throw their voices as far as they could.”

 

Alfred C. Bayles was born on January 6, 1846 in Oyster Bay. Samuel Y. Bayles, his father, died when Alfred was three years old and Alfred was sent to live with his grandfather in Locust Valley. In 1868, after a formal education in Locust Valley, three years as a farm worker, clerk positions in Roslyn and Locust Valley, and the owner of a milk route in Brooklyn, Bayles accepted a clerk position at a drug store in Little Neck. One year later he moved to Port Washington to clerk in a local drug store. By 1872 he was ready to open his own store and that year he partnered with A.H. Baxter to open Baxter and Bayles on the corner of Shore Road and Main Street. Bayles bought out Baxter’s interest in the Partnership in 1880 and he would continue to operate his store for almost another 60 years.

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Bayles’ early business was selling candy and pop. His store not only housed Port’s first telephone but during the late 1880’s also doubled as the Port Washington Post Office. The post office occupied an eight-foot square cubicle in the store. When the post office moved to another location in town Bayles converted the candy store into a drug store. When the current post office opened in 1935 Bayles was given the honorary privilege of purchasing the first three-cent stamp before the post office opened to the public.

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On May 10, 1902, a fire destroyed the original store. The fire started at 10:15am in the Bayles barn behind his store and quickly spread to his store and the wood-frame structures on the north side of Main Street including Van Wicklen’s Ice Cream Saloon. The A. H. Baxter & Co. General Store across the street was saved from the fire by the quick response by the Port Washington, Roslyn, and Great Neck fire departments.

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Bayles rebuilt a second store just west of the original location. It was probably not much larger than the first store. A main entrance was flanked by two large windows enabling pedestrians to gaze inside at the merchandise for sale. A new three-story brick building was completed in 1914 next to his 1902 store.

This building consisted of three retail stores on street level, eight offices on the second floor, and a large hall on the third floor which could be rented for special occasions. This building still stands today with the Dolphin Bookstore occupying the original space of the drugstore.