A historic oceanfront house at 57 West End Road was destroyed Wednesday by a massive fire despite the efforts of seven fire departments and about 100 firefighters.

East Hampton Fire Department Chief Richard Osterberg Jr. described it Thursday as a total loss. The wind, he said, was a major factor in the disaster, fanning the already out-of-control flames by the time firefighters reached the scene.

The initial effort was hampered by the lack of access to a proper fire hydrant.

The 911 call came in at about 2:35 in the afternoon, the chief said. Firefighters remained on the scene for almost seven hours, not leaving until about 9:30.

Gerry Turza, a second assistant chief, was one of the first on the scene. Within minutes, it became clear that it would not be possible to send firefighters into the structure, Chief Osterberg said. "We had a well-advanced fire." Instead, they had to combat the blaze from the outside, pouring on as much water as they could.

Water quickly became an issue. The closest hydrant they could find was fed from a narrow water main. "The hydrant on West End didn't supply enough water for one truck," Chief Osterberg said.

When firefighters did find a fire hydrant they could use, it was on Apaquogue Road, about 3,000 feet away, the equivalent of 10 football fields. Using hoses from the East Hampton and Southampton departments, the firefighters finally had a second source of water, besides the tankers, to combat the blaze.

In the meantime, the various tankers from the different departments, all about 3,000 gallons in capacity, would take turns pumping their water into a dump tank set up at Lily Pond Lane and Apaquogue Road, which in turn would feed a supply engine truck, and from there the other engines.

The mission quickly turned to saving the other houses in the area.

Multiple tankers and engine trucks were called in from across the South Fork. "It was the ultimate team effort," the chief said. Montauk sent an engine and a tanker, Southampton two tankers, a tanker and an engine were sent from North Sea, and the same from Amagansett.

Sag Harbor sent a rapid intervention team to the scene. These teams are trained to extract firefighters from burning interiors when needed. Since no firefighters would be sent into the house, the Sag Harbor unit was deployed on an engine.

Initially, the North Sea firefighters were held in reserve at the East Hampton Fire Department headquarters on Cedar Street in case any other emergencies arose. That is exactly what happened when a plane skidded off a runway at East Hampton Airport. Though there did not appear to be fuel leaking from the plane, the North Sea department was sent to the airport, with Hampton Bays then sending a crew to East Hampton as additional backup, the chief explained.

The initial attack on the fire was from an East Hampton tanker. If the wind had not been blowing so hard, Chief Osterberg said, they might well have extinguished the blaze, he said.

Once the fire was extinguished, well after dark, its debris was excavated, in the search for burning embers. The department had to return twice, including once Thursday morning, when small fires popped up in the ruins.

One firefighter suffered a minor injury when he was struck by a piece of equipment, the chief said, and was taken to Southampton Hospital as a precautionary measure.

Though Ken Collum, the East Hampton Village fire marshal, was not available Thursday because he was attending a state-mandated class, he had arrived at the West End Road fire about halfway through the operation Wednesday, and conducted a thorough investigation, East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen said Thursday.

Chief Larsen had conferred with him, in case there was any need for criminal charges to be brought. It was Mr. Collum's assessment, Chief Larsen said, "that he did not feel there was any reckless or criminal behavior involved" in the start of the fire. According to Chief Larsen, torches being used by workers on the roof ignited the wood underneath, with the wind taking over.

According to Richard Barons of the East Hampton Historical Society, the house was built in 1926 for Ellery S. James, and was designed by Roger Bullard, who also designed the 1922 Maidstone Club clubhouse. It was featured in the Architectural Record in 1933. A 1920s-era real estate booklet from the Strong Brothers described the house as having a large first-floor living room, a library with a bathroom, a dining room, butler's pantry, kitchen, laundry, maid's dining room, two large supply closets, Ping-Pong room, and two double guestrooms with baths. Upstairs was equally as lavish, with five master bedrooms, four maids rooms, and baths. Several more maids and butlers bedrooms were in the garage, along with room for five cars. The rent was $4,500 for the season.

The 1.3-acre property is owned by West End Road Partners of Los Angeles. Peter Morton, co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain, was listed as the applicant in an East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals hearing in February on placement of air-conditioner units at the property.

Chief Osterberg lauded the work of all the departments involved, as well as the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, and the village police, who were instrumental in keeping the extremely narrow, almost one-lane West End Road open for trucks to move in and out.

The former East Deck Motel at Ditch Plain in Montauk is back on the market, after plans to build a private beach club on the five-acre property there were met with widespread protest. 

Listed for $25 million — over $10 million more than it sold for in the fall of 2013 — with Sotheby's International Realty, the property has received "an unprecedented volume of inquiries since we went live with this on Saturday," said Rylan Jacka, an associate broker who shares the listing with Edward A. Bruehl. He said he has been getting messages from "all the boutique hotel people" from New York City, as well as brokers from the city. During a phone interview with The Star on Monday morning alone, he had five inquiries.

"There are not a lot of commercial opportunities on the ocean," Mr. Jacka said of the property, which has resort zoning designation, though he added, "a residential option could be appealing to a buyer." 

In 2013, the 36-room motel located at one of the most popular surfing beaches on the East Coast sold for $14.75 million to ED40, a limited liability corporation. While Mr. Jacka did not identify the sellers, an article in The New York Times in August named J. Darius Bikoff, the multimillionaire owner of Vitamin Water, as being among the principals.

Preliminary plans presented to the East Hampton Town Planning Board for a private club were met with criticism for the way it would change the area. The proposal included a two-story building with a restaurant, spa, an Olympic-size pool, and below-grade parking. An online petition by Montauk's Ditch Plains Association urged planners and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation to rebuff the application, and nearly 200 surfers took the ocean to protest the proposal over Labor Day weekend.

In September, the new owners postponed an appearance before the planning board to allow for negotiations with the town for the purchase of the property. According to Mr. Jacka, the town offered $8 million, clearly not enough to strike a deal. Organizations advocating public purchase of the property have urged the town to get additional appraisals.

By comparison, Gurney's Inn, which is on 11 oceanfront acres on Old Montauk Highway, sold in the spring of 2013 for $25 million. The Dune Deck Resort Motel, an oceanfront property in Westhampton Beach, was sold this winter to a group of investors, including the actor George Clooney, for $19 million. The investors are also building a luxury residential and golf community on a 500-acre property nearby.

With Reporting by David E. Rattray

Roland Walker, one of Montauk’s most well-known patrolmen, is one of the few parks police officers to have worked at every single post on Long Island during his career.

“He’s probably the best-known New York State parks police officer on Long Island,” said Lt. Tom Grenci of the East Hampton Town police, who went to the police academy with Officer Walker and worked closely with him over the years.

Before Officer Walker hung up his Stetson yesterday after 31 years on the job, his colleagues looked back at his long career in patrol, describing him as a good cop who was unflappable and possessed the skill to diffuse difficult situations with his calming voice and compassion.

“The thing that stands out with Roland, in my mind, is that he knows how to deal with people and the public. It doesn’t matter if he’s working at a concert at Jones Beach or handling a domestic at Montauk Point, the guy is unbelievable,” Lieutenant Grenci said.

For Officer Walker, a Bridgehampton native who lives in Riverhead, Montauk was his home away from home — he worked there every summer until 2009, when he left for Wildwood State Park in Wading River and ended up staying. Whether it was patrolling the campgrounds at Hither Hills, answering a dispute between surfers and fishermen at Montauk Point, or investigating a death, he was the consummate professional, according to his former partner Manny Vilar, a Springs resident and senior sergeant in the state parks police.

“The thing that makes a good cop a really great cop is not the amount of tickets they can write or the amount of arrests they can make, it’s the way in which they interact with the public they serve, both when times are good and when you’re dealing with the public and there’s an unfortunate situation,” he said. “As a police supervisor, you would want to have 100 of him.”

Roland Walker, fourth from left, met now Lt. Tom Grenci in the 1983 academy class.                                               Grenci Family 

Officer Walker got his start in law enforcement in an unconventional way. He got his first parking ticket after a party following his 1981 graduation from Bridgehampton High School. He went off to Virginia State University, forgot to pay up, and when he returned home, he got hit with fines. He adopted an “If you can’t beat them, join them” mentality and began the process to become a police officer. It’s a story he laughs about now.

The Southampton Village Police Department sponsored the then-20-year-old through the seasonal police academy in January 1983. But when he graduated he found he wasn’t yet old enough to work as a police officer and instead spent the summer doing security at Cedar Point Park in East Hampton. That led him to find an opening with the state parks police, which gave him a seasonal position in April 1984. He was rehired in May of 1985, becoming a full-time officer the following year, and never left.

Officer Roland Walker, left, and East Hampton Town Police Officer Tom Grenci in 1990.                              Grenci Family

State parks police officers usually work alone, and state parks are spread far apart on Long Island, but East Hampton Town police considered him — Stetson, different uniform, and all — one of them.

Officer Walker said he learned a lot about police work from his friends, many of whom are now retired, like Ed Ecker, Kevin Sarlo, Tommy Miller, John Anderson, Steve Grabowski, Steve Doane, and Tina Giles. They would meet up for a cup of coffee at Salivar’s (the only place to get one during the midnight shift), and then they’d gather at the old Viking Grill on the docks for breakfast. Officer Walker still calls those end-of-shift breakfasts the best he has ever tasted.

The camaraderie grew, with good reason, as they relied on him for backup, and he on them. He also made friends with the local dispatchers, who back then were his lifeline to his headquarters in Babylon, since the radio communications wouldn’t reach that far.

His personality made working together as if they were one team easy, Chief Michael Sarlo of the town police said, calling him an ambassador for law enforcement. “His easygoing nature, fast smile, and positive attitude made him a popular figure,” he said.

They got to know each other well in those early days, when the future chief was field training in Montauk. The two would share laughs and debate the local high school hoops scene — Officer Walker being a Bridgie and Chief Sarlo a Bonacker.

Mr. Ecker, a former town police chief who knew Officer Walker best from his days as a detective, said there was a mutual trust. “He was always sharp, always an asset. I’ve heard the same things about him up and down the Island,” he said. “I knew when I got to a scene that if Roland was there everything was going to have been done the way it needed to be done.”

As a rookie, he made fast friends with Thomas Grenci Sr., the parks maintenance supervisor at Montauk Downs at the time. It was through him that he got an introduction, and later a set of keys, to the Montauk Firehouse so he would have a place to go for a break, especially during cold, quiet winter nights.

“The Montauk Fire Department always made me feel like I was a person who grew up there,” Officer Walker said. During the annual Montauk Friends of Erin St. Patrick’s Day parade — of which he worked 27 in the course of his career — firefighters would look for him along the parade route. “They would always joke with me: ‘You’re going to be the first black grand marshal in the parade.’ ”

He recalled being invited for many meals at the Grenci household in those days, where the late Mona Grenci would serve up her signature Italian cooking and he and Tommy Grenci, then a rookie, would watch “The Young and the Restless” over lunch. “I gained like 20 pounds one winter because I was eating over there so much. She was like a mother to me.”

Thanksgiving dinners at the Eckers, who always invited those working during the holiday to share their meal, probably didn’t help his waistline either, but they are fond memories just the same. “They really made me feel like a part of the family,” Officer Walker said.

He didn’t keep that extra weight on for long, however. He discovered a love of fitness, first as an aerobics instructor and later in the spin studio, where he uses his zest for life to motivate. He has a strong following on the East End, which is sure to keep him busy in retirement.

Officer Walker set “an inspiring example” for all police officers, Chief Sarlo said. “He remade himself early in his career, and from then on he always knew the importance of staying physically fit to handle the rigors of police work.”

Beyond the police work, it is a “big, bright smile” from “a gentle giant” that people like Bucky Silipo, the parks supervisor at the Montauk State Parks complex, will miss. “He’s one of those old-school state employees who was dedicated to the job.”

School boards in Springs and Amagansett on Tuesday approved a new five-year tuition contract with the East Hampton School District, while the Montauk School District chose not to publicly discuss the matter during its own meeting.

As it did previously, East Hampton is offering a 5-percent discount to school districts that agree to exclusively send their students there after they graduate from their home districts. The base tuition rate will see a decrease of about $310, to $25,945.

As the Springs School District faces potentially severe cuts to make a budget increase fit within the constraints of the tax levy cap, its bottom line will at least get a bit of relief when it comes to high school tuition costs thanks to the discount.

Thomas Primiano, the Springs district treasurer, explained that the 5-percent discount means tuition will be $24,648 per student in the regular education program next year and $68,868 per special education student.

The school district expects to send 297 students to East Hampton next year, 9 of whom require special education services. Based on that number, under the new agreement, Springs expects to pay just over $7.7 million in tuition next year. Without the exclusivity agreement, the cost would have been $409,800 more.

Still, total tuition payments will increase over this year’s projected payments. The 2014-15 budget anticipated sending 258 regular education students and 7 special education students to East Hampton, for a total of nearly $6.87 million in tuition.

In the Amagansett School District, tuition to East Hampton is approximately 25 percent of the school budget, which currently stands at just over $10 million.

“We are very pleased that we are able to come to this agreement with East Hampton,” the Amagansett superintendent, Eleanor Tritt, said yesterday. “Over the five-year period, it gives stability and predictability in our tuition rates.”

She said approximately 90 current students from Amagansett are slated to attend school in East Hampton next year, though she expects that number to fluctuate.

Following their school boards’ approval of the tuition rate on Tuesday, voters in Springs and Amagansett will have the chance to vote on it in May; the tuition contracts will appear as separate propositions on each district’s ballots.

Asked for further details on the contract, a school representative in East Hampton declined to provide any, saying “this is an attorney-client privileged matter at this time.”

According to its meeting agenda, the Montauk School Board was set to publicly discuss the tuition rate on Tuesday, but instead went into executive session. In an email on Tuesday night, Montauk’s superintendent, Jack Perna, said, “It is a contract and we are negotiatingterms. . . . Agreement still pending at this time.”

The Wainscott School District has not yet voted to accept the contract. Its superintendent, Stuart Rachlin, said yesterday the school is hoping to be able to approve a one-year agreement with East Hampton, rather than a five-year one.

“For us, the issue is the uncertainty of the construction of affordable housing and the potential impact of the additional tuition on our taxpayers,” Mr. Rachlin said in an email, referring to a controversial proposal to build 48 rental units in the district. “We have embarked on a multiyear plan of closely examining our budgets, tax levies, and fund balance. We feel that the one-year contract is faithful to our plan and to the Wainscott community.”

The tuition agreement was not on Sagaponack’s School Board agenda at its March 9 meeting, and the school district was not able to provide any information by press time.

Tuition for East Hampton’s sending districts is based on what is known as the Seneca Falls formula, which sets separate rates for kindergarten through 6th grade and for 7th through 12th grades, and for special education students in kindergarten through 6th and 7th through 12th.

With Reporting by Janis Hewitt

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Correction: In its original print and online version, this article stated that the base tuition that East Hampton charges to its sending districts will increase from this year to next. In fact, the base tuition will decrease by $310.

It was unseasonably cold at 8 a.m. on Friday when Bonac Buy and Sell opened for business, but the chill did not stop those in search of almost anything imaginable from seeking out the Springs marketplace.

Indoors and out at 8 Washington Avenue, Morgan Roman and George Miller had arranged a huge array of merchandise, much of it culled from the real estate cleanouts they provide, among other services. Statues, dishes and utensils, art, exercise equipment, bicycles, tools, books, appliances, furniture, and much more were on display, all of it priced to sell, the proprietors said.

“We do estate cleanouts, garage cleanouts, any kind of cleanout,” Mr. Roman said. As part of that service, the men haul away the garbage free of charge — within reason, Mr. Miller said, citing some 7,000 pounds of it at one site — in exchange for the merchandise they have now amassed. “People are more than happy to have us come and do the cleanup for free as long we get some good stuff to sell,” Mr. Roman said. They also find stock at auctions of the unclaimed contents of storage containers.

“We’re on the police and village and town tow lists,” Mr. Miller said. “We do wrecking, we can be hired to run flatbeds. We’ll remove your gazebo, your storage container, storage shed, gun safe — anything that nobody else will move.”

Bonac Buy and Sell is a kind of brick-and-mortar version of the Bonac Yard Sale group on Facebook, where Mr. Roman and Mr. Miller, along with Mr. Miller’s wife, Allison, also post merchandise. “We’re in all types of houses, from small houses full of garbage to $25 million houses on Lily Pond Lane,” Mr. Roman said. “When you buy a house for $10 million, the contents mean nothing, really, whether you’re buying or selling. If you’re selling it, you want to leave; if you buy it, you don’t care because you want new stuff. We go to yard sales and buy, too. People get frustrated, whether it’s an estate sale or a yard sale — they just want to be done with it, they want the stuff gone. It’s a process they go through, and we try to make it easier for them.”

“A lot of it is their family heirlooms, and they don’t really want to throw it to the dump,” Mr. Miller said of yard sales. “The yard sale is only for one weekend; if the stuff gets exposed here for a couple more weeks, the more chance it’s going to sell. Sometimes, the yard sale rains out and people get aggravated and take it all to the dump. We want to change that.”

Rescue, restore, repurpose, and recycle is the mantra, said Mr. Miller. (With Ms. Miller, who works at the Veterinary Clinic and Hospital of East Hampton, the men also operate Just Us Animal Rescue.) With respect to inanimate objects, though, “If nothing else works, we’re going to recycle it properly.” Electronic equipment, particularly computers, contains materials that do not belong in landfills. “There’s probably eight or 10 different types of metals in your computer,” he said. “We can break them down right here. We’ll do it right in front of you, too.”

“We can give you your hard drive back, so your information is safe,” Mr. Roman added. “We do recycling of all types: electronic, all types of metal recycling.”

Bonac Buy and Sell is presently open Friday through Sunday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., but plans call for expanded hours of operation. To that end, a “help wanted” sign was affixed to a table outside as of Friday. “We’re hoping someone will come here and say, ‘I want to be a part of this,’ ” Mr. Miller said, “because it’s going to take a unique person to help us do all of this.”

                                                                                                                               Morgan McGivern

East Hampton firefighters were called to a West End Road house on Wednesday afternoon after a report of a fire. When the first fire officials arrived on the scene, flames were reported coming through the roof of the oceanfront house at about 2:40 p.m.

Heavy smoke could be seen pouring from the house's roofline and over the beach. Portions of the house's second floor had apparently collapsed as fire trucks began to arrive.

The 911 call apparently came from 57 West End Road, but that address could not be immediately confirmed. The listed owner of that 1.3-acre property is West End Road Partners of Los Angeles. Peter Morton was listed as the applicant in an East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals hearing in February concerning the placement of air-conditioner units at 57 West End Road. He is a co-founder of the Hard Rock Café restaurant chain.

East Hampton's fire chief called for an additional tanker from the Amagansett Fire Department. Another tanker and a fire truck were summoned to stand by at East Hampton's headquarters. A rapid intervention team, used in case a firefighter becomes trapped, was summoned from the Sag Harbor Fire Department.

West End Road is a narrow, almost single-lane roadway near the Georgica bathing beach, where firefighters set up a staging area. Weather conditions Wednesday were dry and cold with a high wind gusting to 26 miles per hour from the northwest.

Update, 5:26 p.m.: Firefighters remained on the scene of the 57 West End Road fire well into the afternoon. Among the departments sending tanker trucks and other equipment were the Hampton Bays, Southampton, and North Sea fire departments. The slate-roofed, stucco house appeared to be a total loss.

A plane landing at East Hampton Airport skidded off the runway Wednesday afternoon.

Police said David Bulgin, 62, of Sag Harbor was alone in the Beechcraft Baron BE58 he was flying when something went wrong with the landing gear, causing the accident. While the pilot was uninjured, the plane sustained damage and was removed from the runway. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident.

The accident occurred at the same time firefighters were battling a major house fire on West End Road in East Hampton Village.

A man who calls Amagansett home but has spent much of his adult life either in county jail or state prison is again behind bars in Riverside following an arrest by East Hampton Town police last Thursday. This time he was charged with a felony for burglary and a misdemeanor for the possession of burglary tools.

William Lagarenne, 54, was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court by Justice Steven Tekulsky the next day, with his mother and brother seated in the back of the courtroom. Afterward, one of his five brothers, Harry Lagarenne, said, “Our dad was N.Y.P.D. He has two brothers who are retired N.Y.P.D. We are a law-abiding family.”

Unlike his brothers, Mr. Lagarenne has been arrested repeatedly, with multiple convictions. His recent crimes have involved stealing wire, pipes, and gutters and selling them for scrap. He was released from county jail in November, 4 months earlier than his 12-month sentence called for, because of good behavior.

According to the current charges, Mr. Lagarenne entered an abandoned building below the MacKay radio tower in Napeague State Park Thursday afternoon. The tower, off a dirt road that runs from Napeague Meadow Road to the Art Barge, was once part of a network of transmitters for transcontinental marine radio signals. It is now used by New York State police.

In his statement to detectives after his arrest, Mr. Lagarenne admitted that he had cut copper wires out of transformers. But, that wasn’t why he went to the building, he said. The Lagarenne residence is about 3,000 feet away as the crow flies. “I live across the way, and earlier in the day, while looking across the bay, I thought I saw a boogie board of mine that had blown across the ice. I looked into the building and saw that there were some old pieces of wire. I grabbed my saw and wire cutters. I figured it’s not a big deal to cut a couple of pieces.”

A police officer arrived about 20 minutes later and spotted more copper wiring in the back of the truck Mr. Lagarenne had been driving. “I had some wiring and scrap metal that I found on the same property, prior to today,” Mr. Lagarenne said in his statement. “None of that stuff is from houses in the area.”

“I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” Mr. Lagarenne reportedly told police last week. “Even as a kid, I used to go over to that property and look around.”

It had been almost exactly a year, to the day, since the last time East Hampton Town police arrested him. In the early morning hours of March 5, 2014, Officer Arthur Scalzo pulled over Mr. Lagarenne’s truck on Further Lane on a traffic stop. The officer discovered the truck was loaded with copper gutters, which, it turned out, Mr. Lagarenne and another man had stripped off a house on Oceanview Lane. He was charged with three felonies at the time: grand larceny, criminal mischief, and possession ofstolen property. However, he pleaded guilty to all three in County Court at the misdemeanor level in exchange for a sentence of one year in jail. Officer Scalzo was named the department’s top officer for 2014, in part for this case.

On Friday, Justice Tekulsky told Mr. Lagarenne, who is being represented by Brian Francese of the Legal Aid Society, that he was not allowed, by law, to set bail for him because of his past felony convictions. Mr. Francese entered a denial to last week’s felony charge and a not-guilty plea for misdemeanor possession of a hacksaw and the wire cutters. It is likely that Mr. Lagarenne will also be charged with violation of probation.

Since his November release, Harry Lagarenne said, his brother has been helpful caring for their mother, who had a recent stroke and an injured arm. But, at the same time, he expressed frustration with William and the penal system. “We have tried intervention. Shouting, screaming,” he said. He also blamed the system’s lack of rehabilitation efforts. “They release him from Riverhead, he has no money. No skills. No job. What do they expect? They should have just kept him in.”

One day in about 1885, George Fowler put pen to paper and signed away his remaining rights to his ancestral land at Montauk.

Mr. Fowler, a member of the Montaukett tribe, was among a shrinking number of native people who remained then, some two and a half centuries after the arrival of European colonists, and their diseases and economic exclusion.

In the quitclaim agreement he signed that day, Fowler gave up all of his right, title, and interest to what had been his home in exchange for an annual payment from Arthur W. Benson, the founder of the Brooklyn Gas Company and developer of Bensonhurt who had just a short time earlier become the owner of all of Montauk’s approximately 11,500 acres.

The Fowler agreement is part of a cache of documents preserved at the Brooklyn Historical Society and now available digitally from the East Hampton Library that had been fought over for much of the 20th century. Interest in the material has increased following an agreement that will preserve Mr. Fowler’s house in the Freetown section of East Hampton, which Mr. Benson had given him in exchange for his property at Montauk.

The Benson papers, as they have come to be known, contain a significant trove of records, including account books of the Proprietors of Montauk going back to the early-19th century and a 1724 record of a land sale between the Montauketts and the East Hampton Town Trustees. Those involving Benson’s takeover of the land paint a picture of his efforts to consolidate his newly bought property and rid himself of earlier promises made to the Montauketts.

“The ready availability of the information provided in these scans is almost the stuff that dreams are made of from a research standpoint,” said Gina Piastuck, who runs the library’s Long Island Collection.

Unlike the rest of East Hampton, Montauk was carved off early on by the town trustees and left in the hands of a group of private citizens. A court upheld the Montauk Proprietors’ title to the land in 1851, and in its decision, ordered that all of the records relating to Montauk be taken from the town and given to the proprietors.

By 1879, the Proprietors had decided to sell out, and Mr. Benson was the winning bidder, offering $151,000. However, before the deal was finalized, the Proprietors, on advice of their lawyer, decided to turn all of the material over to the town. This did not sit well with Mr. Benson, who about a year later managed to convince them to instead give them to him. In a journal entry among those digitized by the East Hampton Library, Mr. Benson was quoted as promising to keep the papers “in a safe at Montauk and make available for viewing to East Hampton and Southampton residents.”

The importance of the papers became clear early on when members of the Montaukett tribe sued Mr. Benson, then his estate, claiming that their rights had been obtained by fraud and “undue influence by the Bensons and their agents and employees.” Instead of being made available to the townspeople, John A. Strong, an authority on the Montauketts, wrote in a 1993 book on the tribe’s losses, the documents were kept by Mr. Benson and used by his lawyers to plan legal strategy.

Interest in the papers continued into the 20th century. In 1922, The East Hampton Star reported that they had been given by Mr. Benson’s granddaughters to the Long Island Historical Society. In 1934 the East Hampton Town supervisor appointed local justices of the peace, Merton Edwards and William T. Vaughn, to a committee to investigate if copies at least could be obtained.

Negotiations with the Brooklyn Historical Society, as the organization was by then named, continued through the 1930s to no avail. In 1935 The Star reported that the records contained “accounts and receipts of the Proprietors of Montauk, a large number of documents relating to keeping cattle there, and 17 of the original Indian deeds and agreements. A number of these Indian deeds have never been transcribed and so are not to be found in the printed records of the town.”

A delegation from the library that included the late president of its board, Tom Twomey, and Ann Chapman and Janet Ross, visited the Brooklyn Historical Society in 1997 without success.

Finally in 2013, Mr. Twomey and Dennis Fabiszak, the library director, were able convince the society to loan the papers for digitization on the Long Island Collection’s state-of-the-art system with the help of Norbert Weissberg, a library donor and Brooklyn Historical Society trustee.

The society’s then-director personally delivered the three boxes containing the Benson papers, and during about a month’s work they were carefully opened and scanned. Steve Boerner, a library archivist, spent long hours cataloging the material and studying its chronology.

Tantalizing to all involved, a last box of documents awaits in off-site storage in Connecticut. Mr. Fabiszak said that he hoped that material could be added, though it could be a while.

Copies of the Benson papers are available on the library’s website under Long Island History.

The East Hampton School Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to fund a full-day prekindergarten program at the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center for the 2015-16 school year.

“I think this is a historic moment, and an enormous achievement for our community,” Laura Anker, a member of the Eleanor Whitmore board, said at the meeting.

The former East Hampton Day Care Learning Center has run the district’s half-day pre-K program at its facility on Gingerbread Lane since the 1996-97 school year, with about 44 students enrolled this year in three morning classes. The resolution approved on Tuesday allows for 54 students in next year’s prekindergarten, at a rate of $8,157 per student, per year, and a total of no more than $440,475 for the 2015-16 school year.

“This is pretty monumental, to say the least,” Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said yesterday, extolling not only the educational benefits of a longer prekindergarten day, but the social and behavioral ones as well.

Because the district has been working collaboratively with the Eleanor Whitmore Center over the past year or so to reduce costs, the price for next year’s full-day program will actually be less than East Hampton is paying for this year’s half-day program, Mr. Burns said.

“We’re going from half day to full day with no increase in the budget and also working on adding transportation at no additional cost to the district,” said Christina DeSanti, a school board member who has been a big supporter of the move. “All of the research shows that kids in full-day pre-K are performing three to four months ahead of their peers who have had a half day.”

“I’m thrilled about the full-day program, and also the continuity with having the existing pre-K program be the provider is a benefit for the students because we already have a relationship with them,” Beth Doyle, principal of the John M. Marshall Elementary School, said yesterday.

The school board agreed in December to solicit bids for half and full-day programs. Of the three organizations that submitted proposals, the Eleanor Whitmore Center was the only one with a full-day plan. Long Island Head Start would have been able to accommodate 16 children in an existing half-day program at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton. SCOPE Educational Services proposed half-day morning and afternoon programs for 18 children each, but would have needed the district to provide space, equipment, and other services.

“There is so much research on the benefits of having prekindergarten; a full day doubles those benefits,” Ms. Doyle said. “Also, the time to play, the social aspect, is really important too.”

This year the Eleanor Whitmore Center retooled its prekindergarten program to add an optional fee-based extended learning program in the afternoon. “It’s been nice for us because we could pilot the program as full-day this year and we’ll be using the same materials nextyear,” said Maureen Wikane, executive director of the center. “It’s been on my mind for a couple of years, so to really see this come to fruition is amazing.” The center’s staff and board “did our best to make it cost-effective, knowing how much we want to keep the program and how important it is for the children.”

Pre-K teachers from the Eleanor Whitmore Center have been collaborating with kindergarten teachers this year, the principal said, and attended the district’s professional development day, too. “Kindergarten is what first grade used to be, so prekindergarten is what kindergarten was,” making professional development and a consistency between the two all the more important, she said.

“Students have to read for comprehension by third grade,” Mr. Burns said, “and pre-K certainly should help with that.”

With Tuesday’s vote, East Hampton will join the Amagansett, Montauk, and Bridgehampton Schools in offering full-day pre-K. Programs in Montauk and Bridgehampton are for 4-year-olds; Amagansett has programs for both 3 and 4-year olds. For parents, the longer school day comes with an extra benefit. “We realized that the half-day program just didn’t make sense for working parents,” Mr. Burns said.

The Eleanor Whitmore Center offers day care and early education for children from 18 months old, as well, and it will continue to offer afternoon care for prekindergartners until 5:30 p.m., Ms. Wikane said. The school day is likely to run from 8:30 a.m. to about 2:30 p.m. next year.

A prekindergarten open house will be held at the center on April 13 at 6 p.m. Pre-K registration will be on April 14 and 15 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the center for district residents who will be 4 on or before Dec. 1, 2015.

The Eleanor Whitmore Center sits at the edge of the John Marshall campus on land leased from the district. On Tuesday, the board also approved a 10-year extension of that lease, which was set to expire on June 30. The center owns the building and is responsible for installing and removing all improvements on the property.