Family florists since 1903

Our history

James Cress Florist began in Manhattan in 1903 and has been a fixture on Main Street in Smithtown since the early 1960s. Along the way the shop passed from the Cress family to a florist group and, in 2021, to the Karatzas family, whose own start in flowers, selling on a sidewalk as a teenager, echoes the pushcart the Cress family remembers. This is the story as the record and the family tell it.

Meet the familyVisit a shop
  • 1903Founded in Manhattan
  • 1960sOn Main Street in Smithtown
  • 43 yearsJames T. Cress as president
  • 2021The Karatzas family arrives
The James Cress Florist shop at 127 East Main Street in Smithtown, NY
A note on sources

What we know, and how we know it

A shop that has been open for more than a hundred years leaves a trail: newspaper stories, an obituary and its guest book, a company history, the memories of the people who have worked behind the counter. Some of that trail is firm and some of it has been handed down, so this page keeps the two apart.

Entries marked From the record come from published sources, each named beneath the entry. Entries marked As the family tells it are the stories passed along by the Cress family and the people who came after them: cherished, plausible, and still being checked against paper. Where the record is silent we say so rather than fill the gap.

Since 1903

More than a century, one name

Four chapters: the founding family, the long Smithtown years under James T. Cress, a decade with a florist group, and the family that runs the shops today. Pick a chapter to jump ahead, or scroll.

1903 to 1950s

A pushcart in Manhattan

The written record for the first half century is thin: a founding year that every later account repeats, and a family story about how it began. This chapter leans on what the Cress family has passed down.

1903
As the family tells it

Flowers from a pushcart

As the Cress family tells it, the story begins with Thomas Cress selling flowers from a pushcart on the streets of Manhattan in 1903. A 2012 profile of Cress Floral Decorators, the Queens shop run by another branch of the family, gives the same beginning: Thomas, a pushcart, Manhattan, 1903. It is the founding year James Cress Florist has carried ever since, repeated in every later account of the business.

Source: Patch, September 2012, on the wider Cress family

1920sLate in the decade
As the family tells it

Off the cart and into a shop

By the late 1920s the family account has the business trading from a storefront rather than a cart, in Woodside, Queens, where that branch of the family stayed for more than sixty years. Where the James Cress side of the family was working in these decades is one of the gaps we are still trying to close.

Source: Patch, September 2012

1960s to 2007

Main Street, Smithtown

The shop Long Island knows takes shape: a building on Main Street, a second shop in Port Jefferson Station, and forty-three years with James T. Cress at the head of the company.

1961Around this time
From the record

James Cress comes to Smithtown

Around 1961 the business arrived in Smithtown, and in the early 1960s the Cress family bought the building at the corner of Main Street and Bellemeade Avenue that would be its home for the next sixty years. There has been a James Cress shop on that stretch of Main Street ever since.

Source: TBR News Media, March 2025 and August 2022

1964
From the record

James T. Cress becomes president

James T. Cress became president of James Cress Florist Ltd., with shops in Smithtown and Port Jefferson, and held the post for the rest of his life. He and his wife Lydia had two children, Gary and Denise.

Source: Newsday, July 2007

1970s to 2000s
From the record

Four decades of weddings and goodbyes

The guest book kept after his death shows what the shop had become under James T. Cress. Customers remembered the flowers he made for their weddings and for the funerals of their parents, his courtesy and his interest in their families; employees remembered staying with him for decades.

Source: Newsday obituary guest book, 2007

2007July 12
From the record

James T. Cress, 1964 to 2007

James T. Cress died on July 12, 2007, in Port Jefferson, after forty-three years as president of the company. The shops carried on under the family name.

Source: Newsday, July 14, 2007

2011 to 2021

New owners, the same name

For a decade the shops belonged to a family-owned florist group from Georgia. The Cress name stayed on the door, and the Port Jefferson Station shop went home.

2011Summer
From the record

The McCarthy Group buys the shops

In the summer of 2011 the McCarthy Group, a family-owned group of flower shops based in Georgia, bought James Cress Florist with its two branches in Smithtown and Port Jefferson Station. Its own account called the shop historic and dated its start to downtown Manhattan more than a hundred years earlier.

Source: The McCarthy Group, company history

2011And after
As the family tells it

A Cress stays with the shops

As the family tells it, Gary Cress remained involved with the shops after the sale, so the name over the door still had a Cress beside it.

2013October
From the record

Port Jefferson Station goes home

After almost fifteen years in a rented space at 4699 Nesconset Highway, shared with a carpet store, the Port Jefferson Station shop moved back to the house at 36 Nesconset Highway where it had started. Within a month the general manager reported the shop doing better than ever in its old home. It is still there.

Source: Patch, October and November 2013

The James Cress Florist shop at 36 Nesconset Highway in Port Jefferson Station
36 Nesconset Highway, Port Jefferson Station.
2020Spring
From the record

The pandemic closes both doors

Spring 2020 shut both shops for a time, with about forty full-time staff between them and a season of weddings pushed into the following year. Owner Brian McCarthy told TBR News Media that couples were finding new ways to celebrate, moving dates or marrying with smaller guest lists, and the shops carried on.

Source: TBR News Media, June 2020

2021 to today

The Karatzas family

A Long Island family that had run Commack Florist for twenty years takes on the oldest name in the business, moves it up the street and brings the next generation in.

2021December
From the record

George and Linda Karatzas take over

In December 2021 George and Linda Karatzas bought both shops from Family Flowers, the Georgia group the McCarthy Group had become. George had sold his first flowers on a Long Island sidewalk at fourteen, and the couple had run Commack Florist for twenty years. They kept the James Cress name and its wedding department, and the designers stayed on: one of them had already been there forty years.

Source: The Smithtown Chronicle, April 2022, and TBR News Media, March 2025

George and Linda Karatzas, owners of James Cress Florist
George and Linda Karatzas.
2022August 18
From the record

Up the street to 127 East Main

On August 18, 2022 the Smithtown shop left the corner of Main Street and Bellemeade Avenue, its home since the early 1960s, for a larger building a few doors east at 127 East Main Street: 18,180 square feet in place of 13,000, with room for walk-in customers downstairs and a bridal showroom upstairs.

Linda and I don’t want to lose the legacy of James Cress.

George Karatzas, TBR News Media, August 2022

Source: TBR News Media, August 2022

George Karatzas in the James Cress Florist shop in Smithtown
George Karatzas in the Smithtown shop.
2025
From the record

The next generation

By 2025 the family’s children were in the business beside their parents: Stefan and Nick built the online side, which now sends flowers and gifts across the country, and Dawn runs the wedding division. The family’s Commack shop carries the James Cress name too, making three.

Source: TBR News Media, March 2025

Today

Still on Main Street

James Cress Florist works out of 127 East Main Street in Smithtown, with shops in Commack and Port Jefferson Station and a design studio for weddings and events, and sends flowers and gifts across the country every day. The name over the door is the one Manhattan knew in 1903.

Meet the family
Still looking

The record and the gaps

Some things we would love to know and do not yet: who James Cress was to Thomas Cress, and when the shop first opened under his name; where the business worked between the Manhattan pushcart and its arrival in Smithtown; when the Port Jefferson Station shop first opened at 36 Nesconset Highway; and the names of the designers and drivers who kept the place running through each change of hands.

We are working through newspaper archives, business filings and the memories of longtime staff and customers. As each piece is confirmed it moves from family account to record, and this page changes with it.

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James Cress today