Donations of antique objects dating from the 1880s through 1920 are being sought by a committee working to establish a farm museum at the former Lester farm at North Main and Cedar Streets in East Hampton, which is owned by East Hampton Town.

The group is also seeking volunteers who would staff the museum during open hours once a week, on Saturdays.

The Sherrill house and farm, another North Main Street historic site, which the farm museum committee had hoped to see preserved, is reportedly set to be sold to a private buyer by a bank that gained ownership of the property.

East Hampton Town officials had discussed using the town’s preservation fund to preserve the property, either through an outright purchase or by obtaining easements protecting its historic facade and farmland.

Prudence Carabine, an East Hampton resident who has been a prime mover behind both farm preservation efforts, said yesterday that she is still hopeful that some agreement to protect the Sherrill farm, which dates to 1792, will be worked out.

Loida Lewis, the widow of America’s first African-American billionaire, appeared Friday at a meeting of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals  to request permits and variances for a construction project at her 165 Lily Pond Lane property.

She hopes to reconstruct and expand a lawfully pre-existing one-story cottage as an addition to the main house, connected at the second-story level and including a basement. Also sought is the continued existence of a 650-square-foot game room with half-bath that was converted from a garage, and 400 square feet of decking and stairs on its north side. The applicant would also like to replace a wooden retaining wall around a swimming pool with a new one of brick.

The zoning board would have to grant a coastal erosion hazard permit, a special permit, and area variances before the project can proceed.

Ms. Lewis’s late husband, Reginald Lewis, was the chief executive officer of Beatrice Foods International. The couple and their two children previously lived at Broadview, the 1916 mansion at the Bell Estate in Amagansett. It was destroyed by fire in 1991. Soon after, they bought the Lily Pond Lane house, which Ms. Lewis told the board they had wanted for several years. Mr. Lewis died in 1993.

John Courtney, an attorney who represents the East Hampton Town Trustees, is also representing Ms. Lewis in her application. The trustees are involved in litigation with some nearby property owners over boundary lines, but the improvements Ms. Lewis seeks to make, Mr. Courtney said, are on her property and not subject to trustee jurisdiction.

“I’m viewing this as a first step,” he told the board. “You’re going to want to know more about how we’re going to be constructing the addition.”

Considering the application’s three components separately, the board did not object to the in-place replacement of the wooden retaining wall. At over 600 square feet, however, the game room’s gross floor area is more than double the maximum allowed for accessory structures other than garages. Mr. Courtney acknowledged that the applicant had not applied for the necessary permit to change the use of the structure.

“The square footage pre-exists,” he told the board.

“There is no square-foot limit for garages, and there is for other buildings,” Linda Riley, the village attorney, pointed out.

The third and “most troublesome” question, said Frank Newbold, the board’s chairman, is the addition to the main house. “Initial impressions are, it’s very large,” he said. “Yes, it is a pre-existing cottage, but the existing cottage is one story, does not have a full basement.” The board, he said, would need a lot more information.

All the proposed improvements, Mr. Newbold noted, are seaward of the coastal erosion hazard line. “Our concerns are having such a large expansion so close to what is a sensitive dune area, how the construction is going to be done. There’s nothing in your architect’s rendering showing the depth of the basement, how it would be constructed.”

Mr. Courtney then introduced the architect, John David Rose. “Keep in mind that it is an existing footprint that we’re reusing, although we are pouring a new foundation,” Mr. Rose said. “The work would be happening from the landward side.”

The family, Mr. Rose said, “has a lot of grandchildren on the way. Currently, if family are staying in this space, they have to go outside to go to bed.” Connecting the buildings, he said, would eliminate that problem. “We’ve tried very hard to reduce the scope of this second-floor addition.”

Mr. Newbold said the board would want to see the protocol for construction and have the building inspector review it, “as we have done with other oceanfront applications.”

At that point, Ms. Lewis approached the dais. She said that she and her late husband had considered leaving the area after losing Broadview, “but we loved East Hampton.” She said the purchase of the Lily Pond Lane house was a “dream come true” for them.

“Twenty years later, I have three grandchildren, two daughters, and my youngest daughter is pregnant.”

She said that to her, Mr. Rose’s plans “looked so enticing, because now it’s one whole,” but that she had been advised the zoning board would have to approve. “And so, with great humility,” she asked that the plan, “with your modification, be approved.”

Mr. Newbold said the hearing would be held open until the board’s meeting of May 23.

Until an attorney for the East Hampton School Board stepped in, it appeared on Friday that a decision was imminent on P.C. Schenck and Sons’ application to install AT&T antennas and ground-based equipment at its oil distribution facility on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village.

The application had already been discussed at three previous zoning board of appeals meetings, and on Friday, the applicant’s attorney announced additional modifications to the plan that he said would mitigate noise generated by the proposed ground-based equipment cabinets, about which nearby property owners had voiced concern.

The size of a proposed concrete pad on which the equipment cabinets would be situated would be reduced by a third, to 12.6 by 32 feet, said John Huber, an attorney for the applicant. With the reduction, no part of the pad would lie within the required 30-foot transitional yard setback, he said. A sound barrier would be increased from 8 to 12 feet in height, reducing noise at adjacent neighbors’ property to a measurement below the ambient level of 44 decibels. The sound barrier would be lined on its eastern side with cedar planking for aesthetic purposes, Mr. Huber said.

In discussions with Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer for the village, it was agreed that, as a condition of the board’s approval, a sound-level measurement would be taken once the facility is operational, Mr. Huber said.

Given the number of appearances he and Mike Patel, a consultant to AT&T, have made before the board, coupled with the fact that the proceedings are televised and have been reported in The Star, “I believe the public is very well aware of the matters we’ve discussed,” Mr. Huber said. Residents, he said, “have had ample opportunity to appear and speak to the issues.”

When Frank Newbold, the board’s chairman, asked if anyone else would like to be heard, Kevin Seaman, the school board’s attorney, walked to the dais. The proposed installation, he said, is an extension of a nonconforming use and should be held to a higher threshold of review and consideration.

The school board’s concern, he said, is for the East Hampton Middle School on Newtown Lane, near the Schenck facility. The applicant has not made the case that public safety issues have been resolved, he said, suggesting that adverse impacts from noise and “disturbing emissions of electrical discharges” have not been addressed, nor has it been shown that property values will not be impacted.

Linda Riley, the village attorney, told Mr. Seaman of a “somewhat unusual provision in our code” that authorizes the zoning board to grant a special permit for the extension or alteration of an existing nonconforming use. It is up to the board to decide whether or not the application meets the standards for granting such an extension, she said.

Mr. Huber said the board should base its determination on whether the applicant has shown a need for its facility. Based on relevant criteria — gaps in service, the remedy that the proposed installation would provide, and its minimal intrusion on the community — the application should be granted, he said.

The school board “would like the opportunity to challenge the issue of a gap in coverage,” Mr. Seaman countered. And, he said, “We think there would be an intrusion” on neighboring properties.

Christopher Minardi, a zoning board member, said that many people have expressed concern about emissions from the antennas and their potential adverse impact on health.

“We can’t consider that,” Ms. Riley said. “Federal law precludes this board from basing a determination or any consideration on that,” assuming it meets federal standards.

“We’re aware there’s a large amount of public concern,” Mr. Newbold said, citing proximity to the school, adjacent residences, and the commercial building at 66 Newtown Lane. “We want to make sure we have all the facts so we can form a fully informed opinion.”

The board of education, Mr. Huber said, “has had more than ample opportunity to evaluate the substantial evidence that’s been presented.” Nonetheless, the hearing was left open to be revisited at the board’s April 25 meeting.

The Montauk Fire Department began its celebration of its 75th anniversary on Sunday with an ecumenical memorial service at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church honoring all those who have served the department who have since died. A roll call of the deceased firemen and ladies auxiliary members was read, with the church bell rung after each name.

As members of the New York City police band played bagpipes and drums, department members were led into the church by Dutch Riege and Vinnie Franzone, assistant fire chiefs. The chief, Joe Lenahan, was tending to his ailing mother, who has since died, and was unable to attend.

Essex Street was lined with firefighting apparatus, including antique engines. After the ceremony, the participants gathered at the Montauk Firehouse for a buffet.

According to Eddie Ecker, the former East Hampton Town police chief who is acting as spokesman for the Fire Department, the celebration will continue through the coming months, culminating in a three-day event on Columbus Day weekend. “There is going to be a cocktail party Saturday, June 7. We’ll have a tent set right in front of the firehouse in the grassy area,” he said.

A parade down the hamlet’s Main Street on Columbus Day will coincide with the annual fireworks display. The October weekend will also feature the annual inspection dinner at Gurney’s Inn and an open house at the fire station. Additional events are still being planned, Mr. Ecker said.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service will close the beach above mean high tide at the Amagansett National Wildlife Refuge, which runs from Atlantic Avenue almost to Indian Wells Beach, and most of the Jessup’s Neck peninsula in the Elizabeth A. Morton National Wildlife Refuge in Sag Harbor on Tuesday to protect nesting shorebirds.

The federal agency puts these areas off limits from April 1 through Aug. 31 every year so that the piping plover, which is federally designated as a threatened species, and the least tern, which the state considers threatened, are able to nest and hatch eggs. The closed areas will be marked with signs, fencing, and rope.

According to the agency, one pair of piping plovers and 26 pairs of least terns nested at the Amagansett refuge and three pairs of plovers, 63 pairs of least terns, and one pair of American oystercatchers nested at Jessup’s Neck last year.

Work briefly came to a halt at the East Deck motel in Ditch Plain, Montauk, last week after Tom Preiato, East Hampton Town’s chief building inspector, issued a verbal stop-work order after receiving a report that concrete drainage rings were being installed on the beach there.

The property’s new owner, a limited liability company headed by Scott Bradley, had received a go-ahead from the zoning board of appeals to add up to 6,000 cubic yards of sand to buttress the five-acre oceanfront property’s dune and bluff crest.

According to Michael Sendlenski, a town attorney, work was halted and the unauthorized rings removed as soon as the order was issued.

Mr. Bradley took full responsibility for the error yesterday, saying he thought he was allowed to add the rings, which were incorrectly identified in some reports as being for septic use. “We got a phone call, and the next day, we took care of it and did exactly what we were asked to do,” he said.

Mr. Preiato agreed, saying on Tuesday that Mr. Bradley and his company had been fully cooperative and that he had rescinded the stop-work order.

“From now on,” Mr. Bradley said, “before we do any work, I am consulting with Tom Preiato.”

Mr. Bradley said he did not see any other work happening in the near future except for dune building and the revegetation of native species. “Finishing this beautiful dune and then starting on the dunes to the east and west of us” are this year’s goals, he said. The East Deck, which will not be open for business this year, will keep its old familiar name.

The new owners — Mr. Bradley, a Lawrence Sanford, and an outside investor whom he declined to identify — are “passionate” about working with the town to protect not just their property but the greater Ditch Plain neighborhood, Mr. Bradley said.

Construction of a rock revetment in front of an oceanfront property at 11 West End Road in East Hampton Village resumed last Thursday after State Supreme Court Justice Andrew Tarantino lifted a temporary restraining order that had blocked the work since November.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had initially given the property owner, Mollie Zweig, a tidal wetlands permit, and the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals had granted her variances to allow the revetment, or sea wall, as well as the removal of an existing rock groin.

The zoning board’s determination had come over the strong objection of the East Hampton Town Trustees, which claimed jurisdiction over the beach where the revetment is being installed.

Two days after work began on Veterans Day 2013 — when courts were closed — the trustees obtained the restraining order. It was extended in December. On Feb. 24, Ms. Zweig applied for a permit from the trustees, as that board had insisted she is required to do.

On Feb. 25, Stephen Angel, an attorney representing Ms. Zweig, and Aram Terchunian of First Coastal, which is doing the work, delivered a lengthy presentation to the trustees detailing the project. Mr. Angel said that a timely resolution was essential, given the piping plover nesting season that, beginning next month, will prohibit construction activity on beaches until the fall. The application is pending.

At a meeting March 11, Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, said that the application was incomplete and that the board had sent a letter to Ms. Zweig seeking an updated survey. She also said that the notarization page on the application had not been signed.

Brian Matthews, an attorney from a law firm that is representing the trustees in their lawsuit against Ms. Zweig, also met with the trustees on the matter during a closed-door session at that meeting.

Ms. McNally said on Friday that she was frustrated but not entirely surprised by the resumption of the revetment’s construction. “They already know they’re proceeding without a trustee permit,” Ms. McNally said on Friday. “They know we’re not happy with what they’re doing. I don’t know what to do. Even though I knew it could have started, I’m just flabbergasted.”

Mr. Matthews would not say how the trustees planned to proceed, but said on Friday that the lifting of the restraining order should not be seen as a resolution in Ms. Zweig’s favor.

“When Justice Tarantino lifted the T.R.O., he did so entirely on the grounds of finding no irreparable harm. Since Zweig had submitted an application to the trustees, there was no longer any irreparable harm and allowed her to proceed with construction,” he said.

Mr. Matthews said he disagreed with that position, “but the important part is, he went out of his way to say that he wasn’t rendering a decision on the merits of the trustees’ claim. . . . In stating that he wasn’t looking at the merits, he acknowledged that they’re going to be building this at their own risk.”

“They run the risk of having to pull it out,” he said.

The Maidstone Club’s application to expand and modernize its irrigation system, which has been the subject of multiple meetings of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, will require a final environmental impact statement before it can proceed.

At the board’s meeting on Friday, its chairman, Frank Newbold, said the board had determined that the final statement was needed to address “the various substantive comments received” from the public concerning the project. Its potential impact on the ecological well-being of Hook Pond has drawn concern from the East Hampton Town Trustees as well as nearby property owners. 

The board extended the time period in which the private club can submit the first draft of the final environmental impact statement. 

Also on Friday, even as the controversial construction of a rock revetment in front of the property at 11 West End Road proceeded, the board quickly approved the repair of an existing  revetment nearby, at 7 West End Road, between Anthony Manheim’s property and the ocean. The revetment, constructed in 1978, will be restored to its original dimensions and coverage using 5,000 cubic yards of sand. It was exposed by Hurricane Irene in 2011 and damaged by Hurricane Sandy the following year.

Like the project at 11 West End, whose owner, Mollie Zweig, obtained permits from the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the zoning board but not from the town trustees, Mr. Manheim’s reconstruction must be completed by April 1; otherwise it must wait until the fall to be finished. Piping plover nesting season halts all such activity on that date.

The D.E.C. issued a permit for the Manheim revetment, and eight of the nine trustees voted last month to do the same, calling the pre-existing structure’s repair “in place, in kind.” The trustees, who typically oppose hardening structures along the shoreline, are in litigation with Ms. Zweig, but made an exception for Mr. Manheim’s revetment, which had been buried for many years until 2011.

The zoning board granted the project a necessary variance  from a section of the village code pertaining to preservation of dunes. The code not only prohibits structures within 100 feet of a contour line representing a natural elevation of 15 feet above the mean high-water mark, but requires reconstruction and related activities to meet a 150-foot setback from the southerly edge of the beach grass along the ocean.

The revetment’s repair, said Richard Whalen, an attorney for the applicant, was needed chiefly to protect a cottage that was damaged by Sandy and is “at severe risk” of being destroyed. The two-bedroom cottage was built, in the 1960s, on the crest of the primary dune; as a pre-existing structure, the applicant has the legal right to retain it.

The cottage’s precarious state “should justify you in granting a variance,” Mr. Whalen told the board.

“We would have to get this work done very quickly if we’re going to do it in the spring of this year,” Mr. Whalen told the board. “Otherwise, it’s delayed until at least the second half of October.

“You are under a compelling deadline,” Mr. Newbold agreed. “And we’re clear who really runs the village: the plovers,” he said, drawing laughter from his colleagues.

Mr. Newbold also announced that the application of P.C. Schenck and Sons to install AT&T cellphone antennas and additional equipment has been adjourned to March 28. That proposal has drawn opposition from neighbors who fear noise generated by the cooling fans that would be situated inside ground-based equipment cabinets on the site.

An award-winning environmental documentary, “Bag It!” will be shown at LTV Studios in East Hampton on Friday, March 28, at 6 p.m. The film follows a character as he travels the world seeking to understand the use of plastic bags in our everyday lives. It addresses the effect of all plastics on the oceans, human health, and the environment.

Those who attend the screening, which is sponsored by the East Hampton Town litter committee, have been asked to donate a nonperishable food item at the door. The foodstuffs will be given to the East Hampton Food Pantry.         

Members of the litter committee will sell popcorn, with proceeds also going to the food pantry. Moviegoers have been asked to take their own beverages along, in reusable containers. The film is suitable for all ages.

To the surprise of many in the audience, Tom Sperry, an employee of the Meeting House restaurant in Amagansett Square who had just delivered a vocal performance uncannily reminiscent of Frank Sinatra, was not crowned Mr. Amagansett at last Thursday’s fifth annual pageant.

Instead, the honor was bestowed on one Billy Buckhorn, a k a East Hampton Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc. Mr. Van Scoyoc, in the guise of a deer, played an electric guitar and sang plaintively about the plight of his species in a town where bullets, vehicles, and proposed sterilization schemes are a constant threat.

The pageant, a fund-raiser for the Donald T. Sharkey Memorial Community Fund, drew a large crowd to the Stephen Talkhouse, where eight contestants vied for the title. Mr. Sharkey, formerly the town’s chief building inspector, died in 2009.

Donations were still being tallied on Monday, but Britton Bistrian, one of five judges of the pageant, said that the fund would likely cover either the annual $2,500 scholarship to a community-minded student or the annual $1,500 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Peter Honerkamp, an owner of the Talkhouse and perennial losing contestant in the pageant, introduced the event by welcoming the “seven or eight idiots who once again participate.”

Prior to the competition, a video depicting the late Carl (the Greek) Gust, a bartender who worked at the Talkhouse, was shown. Mr. Gust, a contestant in the first Mr. Amagansett pageant in 2010, was the deserving winner of that competition: The video had last Thursday’s audience in hysterics, along with many of the Talkhouse staff who were impersonated by Mr. Gust in his performance. Mr. Gust, who died in 2012, was also the grand marshal of the Am O’Gansett parade that year.

Performing as Boo Bonac, Gordon Ryan, an attorney, once again sought the title with his sidekick, the Plague. Once again Mr. Ryan demonstrated either an unwillingness or inability to carry a tune.

Two UpIsland men, from Sayville and Selden, followed, each delivering a bawdy stand-up routine. “You get an ‘A’ for effort. That’s about it,” Mr. Honerkamp told the first upon his performance’s conclusion. “Nail it,” he begged the second as he took the stage. “Save us.”

Nick Kraus, a manager of the Talkhouse, was in San Diego for a Soldier Ride event and unable to attend. In his place, a short film provided laughs that had theretofore been in short supply. Mr. Honerkamp’s entry, also via video presentation, also drew laughs. The self-described “least interesting man in the world” poked fun at himself and his myriad frustrations.

Marco Marin, a bartender at Indian Wells Tavern, thrilled but ultimately disappointed some in the audience with an aborted striptease. Mr. Honerkamp’s exhortations to return to the stage and complete his performance went unanswered; the crown would not be his.

Finally, Mr. Sperry dazzled the crowd with his song and snappy attire, singing his own, localized lyrics to Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn’s “My Kind of Town,” popularized by Sinatra. Mr. Sperry’s channeling of Ol’ Blue Eyes was remarkable, and the Talkhouse crowd erupted in cheers long before he had finished.

Ms. Bistrian congratulated Mr. Sperry for “an amazing freshman effort,” but announced that the coveted title belonged to Mr. Van Scoyoc. Mr. Sperry, Ms. Bistrian wrote in an email, was “a showstopper with talent.” But, she wrote, what swayed her and her co-judges, Erica Yardley, Maura Gledhill, Beth Baldwin, and Debbie DiSunno, was “the humor in Peter’s performance about the timely issue of the deer cull.” Mr. Van Scoyoc “took an intriguing position of a buck that would rather be shot than have his does sterilized,” she wrote.

During his performance, Mr. Van Scoyoc occasionally paused to remove an oversized, felt “tick” from his furry costume, which he then threw at the judges. The town councilman’s humorous take on current events put him over the top, in the judges’ eyes.

“It was a tough debate,” Ms. Bistrian wrote, “but in the end it came down to the uniqueness and humor, and the desire to see Tom perform again next year.”