The original owner of this home designed by Isaac H. Green Jr. and located on the west side of Handsome Avenue halfway down the street, was James W. Ridgeway, a Brooklyn district attorney.  Ridgeway and his family were one of Sayville's first summer residents.  Following financial reversals due to a recession, Ridgeway sold the house in 1897 to a New York contractor and builder, Elward Smith.  Smith died in 1900. His widow, Frances Cairns Smith, remarried and continued to live in the house with her six children.  Her second husband was General Robert Gibson Smith, of the Fourth Regiment of the New Jersey National Guard.  After the death of Frances' son Irving Elward Smith in France during World War I, her two surviving sons donated the monument in Sparrow Park in memory of their brother and the other servicemen from the Sayville killed in action.  The eagle on a globe seen in the left side of this postcard originally graced the facade the New York World newspaper building in New York City.  Robert Gibson Smith, the brothers' stepfather, donated this golden eagle to the Sparrow Park monument where it remains to this day.
Undated postcard from the collection of Sayville Library.
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