“Dark Elegy,” a sculpture created by Suse Lowenstein of Montauk to depict the grief of those, like her, who lost loved ones in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, could find a permanent home at Montauk’s Kirk Park.

Ms. Lowenstein’s son Alexander was 21 when he was among the 270 people killed in that incident — 259 aboard the jet, and 11 on the ground.

She and her husband, Peter Lowenstein, have offered the piece to the town, and discussed their proposal at a town board meeting in Montauk on Tuesday. Officials will seek public opinion before deciding whether to accept.

The sculpture has been on display  in the Lowensteins’ garden at 11 East Lake Drive, which is open to the public daily, all year, from 10 a.m. to noon. Thousands come each year to see the piece, Ms. Lowenstein said.

The visitors, who learn about the work solely through word of mouth, have included a number of those affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack. Ms. Lowenstein began the sculpture the year after the Lockerbie bombing and it was, coincidentally, dedicated on Sept. 11, 1991. It has been exhibited in a number of communities throughout the Northeast.

The sculpture comprises 74 larger-than-life unclothed figures of women positioned as they remembered themselves at the moment they learned of their loss. It depicts Ms. Lowenstein herself, as well as other mothers, wives, and grandmothers who contacted the sculptor and came to her to relive their reactions and postures in the throes of grief.

“I let everyone know what I was doing and I left it up to them to participate,” Ms. Lowenstein said Tuesday night. “I never meant it to be just women, but no men came.”

The couple has proposed installing the pieces in a 75-foot diameter circle in the park, about midway between Fort Pond and the park’s perimeter along Montauk Highway. The area would be covered with garden cloth and the same shredded rubber, made from recycled tires, that was used at a playground the Lowensteins provided at the Montauk Playhouse. No mowing would be needed, Ms. Lowenstein said, and the bronze figures themselves would be covered in a layer of protective wax.

The bronze casting of the pieces, through the lost wax method, would annihilate the original work, executed in a synthetic stone material over steel armatures.

The casting would take a year, Ms. Lowenstein said, if commissioned at two different foundries, with each doing half the figures, or two years if completed at one foundry.

It would be “a multimillion-dollar project,” she said. “It’s actually Mr. Qaddafi’s money we’re using for this,” she said, referring to the Lowensteins’ portion of the $2.7 billion in compensation paid by Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libyan government to relatives of Lockerbie victims — reportedly $8 million each. Libya acknowledged responsibility for the bombing in 2003 and agreed to the payment in exchange for a formal end to an 11-year United Nations embargo.

“We didn’t want to spend it for anything else but this,” Ms. Lowenstein said of the money. The couple would also bear the cost for moving and installing the work.

“We love the hamlet,” said Ms. Lowenstein. “Our son loved it here.”

“It’s also very practical,” she said of the Kirk Park site, because it is easily accessible, has nearby parking, and is adjacent to Second House and a planned Native American museum, which would make the area “a natural cultural corner.” The art installation is endorsed by the Montauk Historical Society.

“I hope ‘Dark Elegy’ in Kirk Park will actually become a destination,” said Ms. Lowenstein. Because it is “quite a serious memorial,” she said, should concerns arise about its immediate visibility from the highway, as visitors drive into the hamlet, landscaping could be installed, she said, so that park visitors would have to take deliberate steps to see the work.

In considering whether a public installation might be appropriate, Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said Tuesday that the powerful emotions evoked by the sculpted postures in their wrenching positions of grief were initially of concern to him. “It’s so emotional, so raw,” he said he recalled thinking after first seeing pictures of the piece. His concerns faded after he experienced “Dark Elegy” in person, he said.

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said he had also viewed the work “and was almost brought to tears, honestly.” He said he believed “the sculpture, and everything it represents, belongs in a public place.”

A plan to bronze the sculptures and a search for an appropriate permanent home for them has been in the works for some time.

Representative Tim Bishop introduced a bill some years ago calling for “Dark Elegy” to become a memorial in Washington, D.C.

However, in 2008, the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission rejected an installation, believing, said Ms. Lowenstein this week, that the work was “too raw.” Instead, she said, the agency told her that it was seeking a more generic tribute to terrorism victims. “There’s nothing generic, in my opinion, about what terrorism leaves behind,” Ms. Lowenstein said.

Mr. Lowenstein said in an interview on Tuesday that the couple feel “very strongly about the community. We love Montauk, and our kids grew up here. We enjoy giving back, and this is a good way of doing it.”

Montauk identifies itself publicly in numerous ways, Ms. Lowenstein told the board — as a beach or fishing destination, for instance. But, she said, “We don’t have a public expression of the vibrant arts community that is here.”

A number of Montauk residents at Tuesday’s meeting endorsed the installation of the sculpture at Kirk Park, calling it a fitting representation of community values and concerns.

“Dark Elegy,” said Larry Smith, “will forever and to all people give a human dimension to that term, ‘international terrorism.’ This is a monument to peace, to universality.” The installation proposal, he said, “is an awe-inspiring act of generosity and love.”

“Art is the visual expression of human emotion,” said Bill Akin. “Through art we share what is common to all people.”

The sculpture, said Ed Braun, “is not a political statement, and it’s not solely about terrorism,” but about “all kinds of loss and grieving.”

On Tuesday evening, following the presentation to the town board, Ms. Lowenstein was in her studio, but took time out to speak to a reporter. She is sculpting with found wood pieces these days. “I sort of feel my life’s work — my most important

 work — is done,” she said. “So now I feel I’m sort of playing; I’m having fun in the studio.”

East Hampton Town could owe more than $330,000 for a study of the Montauk Inlet by the Army Corps of Engineers — a hefty bill of which town officials were unaware but which recently came to light as part of a lawsuit against the town and the Army Corps. The amount due, under a contract signed in 2002 by former Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, has not been included in town budgets.

The study was to underpin decisions about dredging the Montauk Harbor channel and an erosion-control project to the west of the harbor. A number of alternatives and estimated costs were presented by the Army Corps in 2012, and the town board voted last fall to endorse a plan calling for the Corps to dredge the channel, which has shoaled over the years, to a depth of 17 feet, with approximately 230,000 cubic yards of dredged material to be put on the beach to the west of the inlet.

 The project was estimated several years ago at $26 million, of which the town was to pay about $800,000. But it stalled when residents of Soundview Drive and Captain Kidd’s Path, whereproperties have experienced severe erosion, sued over the impact of the harbor’s jetties.

The $2.6 million contract for pre-project analysis of the project lays out a cost-sharing agreement among the town, the Army Corps, and the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. Of that, half is to be paid with federal funds and the remaining amount shared between the state and the town on a 70- percent, 30-percent basis.

Based on the estimated study cost, the town’s share could be $336,750, although the agreement allows the town or the state to contribute up to $100,000 of their fee with “in-kind” services. East Hampton was to reimburse the state for initially coming up with the town’s share.

The status of those payments was unclear this week. Larry Cantwell, the East Hampton Town Supervisor, said the bill could represent a “significant unfunded obligation.” He had not reviewed the contract, he said, noting that Len Bernard, the town budget officer, had brought it to his attention.

The Sagaponack man charged with setting fire to a $34 million Dune Road house in Bridgehampton on April 19 has been found mentally incompetent to stand trial by several doctors, his attorney, Brian DeSesa of Edward Burke Jr. and Associates, said in Southampton Town Justice Court this morning.

However, Jacob De Lauter, an assistant district attorney, insisted that David Osiecki, 54, be examined by another set of physicians. “They are entitled to an independent examination,” Southampton Town Justice Andrea H. Schiavoni said about the request, ordering a four-week adjournment.

Mr. Osiecki has been held on $500,000 bail since he was arraigned on two arson charges, one a felony, on April 21.  “We don’t know if you understand what is happening,” the justice had said to Mr. Osiecki during the arraignment and she ordered a psychological examination.

“He really needs help. He is not mentally sane,” Mr. DeSesa said outside the courtroom. He questioned the point of a second mental exam. If it results in the same finding as the first, Mr. DeSesa said, Mr. Osiecki is likely to be turned over to the New York State Department of Mental Health and be institutionalized until such time as he is found to be mentally competent.

Mr. DeSesa said the prosecution would lose little by allowing Mr. Osiecki to be hospitalized: while the misdemeanor arson charge against the defendant might drop away, the felony charge would remain, with the prosecution able to seek an indictment at any time. 

Mr. Osiecki admitted that he set two fires in a 20-hour period, according to police. The first fire, on April 18, was behind a nursery on Hayground Road and was originally thought to be a mulch fire. His actual target, police said he told them, was a nearby cellphone tower.

The Dune Road fire was reported at 5:48 a.m. on April 19 at a house belonging to Ziel Feldman, founder and managing partner of H.F.Z. Group, a New York City real estate and investment firm, whom Mr. Osiecki knows. The seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom house was listed by Corcoran Group Real Estate in 2012 for $34 million.

That fire, which caused considerable damage, was extinguished by the Bridgehampton Fire Department with the help of the Sag Harbor, Southampton, East Hampton, and Amagansett fire departments.

Mr. Osiecki allegedly told police it took him three hours to get the blaze going. They said he left something with personal identification at the site, leading them to find and arrest him early that afternoon.

Capt. Chris Anderson of the East Hampton Police Department said it was investigating the possibility that Mr. Osiecki was involved in a couple of East Hampton-area fires.

In the weeks and months leading up to the fires, Mr. Osiecki had been repeatedly arrested by Sag Harbor, Southampton Town, and Suffolk County police, mostly  on petty theft and trespassing charges. There are several court-issued orders of protection from Mr. Osiecki in place for individuals on the East End, as well as for his daughters. While the Sag Harbor police thought he was homeless, he actually owns a large house in Sagaponack.

Mr. Osiecki displayed the same demeanor today as he had during his April arraignment, despite wearing leg chains, which could be heard on the floor as he shuffled into the courtroom. He looked slowly around with a beaming smile, making eye contact and acknowledging the few people in the courtroom one by one, with a slight nod of his head. He carried a decrepit accordion folder filled with papers, about six inches thick, which he placed on a table.

After the justice ordered the second examination and set a new court date, the attorneys exchanged legal jargon concerning the case until the justice spoke directly to Mr. Osiecki. “Do you understand?” she asked softly.

“Yes, I do, your honor,” he answered, nodding his head .

Afterward, as he was being led through the courtyard to a sheriff’s car to be taken back to jail in Riverside, a reporter asked him about his sanity. “I am very sane,” he answered, firmly, still smiling. Mr. Osiecki, a tall man with an erect, almost regal posture, clutched the folder in his handcuffed hands and crouched down as the officer opened the back door of the cruiser for him. The reporter asked if he had started any other fires recently. He paused. “Have a good day, gentlemen,” he said, as the officer closed the door.

Two men in the courtroom during the proceedings were private investigators, seeking clues to the whereabouts of a client’s personal property, which Mr. Osiecki apparently disappeared with in recent months. As clueless at the end of the court session as they were when  it began, the looked at each other and shook their heads.

Anthony Drexel Duke, who as founder of the former Boys Harbor camp on Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton was a model and benefactor to generations of inner-city children, died at home in Gainesville, Fla., on April 30. He was 95 and had been diagnosed with cancer some time ago.

Mr. Duke grew up in Old Westbury, New York City, and Southampton. In the summer of 1937, after volunteering at a camp for disadvantaged city kids, he arrived in Southampton with a group of campers. With his mother’s blessing, he set up his own camp in the pool house of the family estate.

By the next summer, he had arranged to use land on Jessup’s Neck for his own camp, which led to the establishment in the 1950s of the camp at Three Mile Harbor. It grew to become Boys and Girls Harbor, a multidisciplinary education and arts organization based in Harlem that includes day care, social services, and the Harbor Science and Arts Charter School, one of the first charter schools in the state. To date, more than 50,000 young people have attended programs at the Harbor.

Mr. Duke’s attitude and belief in bringing out the best in all people was summed up in a 2007 autobiography, “Uncharted Course: The Voyage of My Life,” written with Richard Firstman, in which he commented about some of his early campers who had lived up to their reputations as troublemakers. “In some of those cases, all it took was a little care and attention to change a kid’s direction,” he wrote.

At the camp, originally only for boys, he led calisthenics and took boys aboard his boat out onto Gardiner’s Bay. He shook each boy’s hand every morning and said good night to each at night. Those celebrating birthdays were invited, with a handful of friends, to a celebration at the family house, next to the camp.

Mr. Duke’s own children became campers, and like many others went onto become counselors. Many campers went on to extraordinary lives of their own. Among them is Eduardo Padro, who earned a scholarship to Yale and became a New York State Supreme Court justice.

Mr. Duke was descended from three of the country’s wealthiest families. His mother, Cordelia Drexel Biddle, was a daughter of the Drexel family, Philadelphia bankers and founders of Drexel University there, and the Biddles, who were bankers and landowners. In 1915, she married Angier Buchanan Duke, whose family founded the American Tobacco Company in 1890.

Anthony Drexel Duke, the couple’s second child, was born on July 28, 1918. His father died in a boating accident in 1923, when he was 5, and he moved with his mother and brother from Manhattan to Cedarhurst and later to Old Westbury.

He attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., and then Princeton University, but left to join the Navy. During World War II, Mr. Duke commanded a landing ship, serving during the Normandy Invasion and in the Pacific. He was awarded three battle stars and a Bronze Star for his service.

After the war, Mr. Duke completed his education at Adelphi University.

“We all know he was a great man, and those of us who knew him well knew that he was a really great guy,” said his son Anthony Drexel Duke Jr. “The humanity of the man was just extraordinary.”

“He was a family man, and East Hampton was home,” said Luly Duke (Maria de Lourdes Alcebo), his wife of more than four decades, from whom he was separated. “He really made time for his children.”

The couple worked together to support the Harbor camp and hosted the annual Grucci fireworks fund-raisers that were begun by Mr. Duke’s friend George Plimpton.

After it was decided to close the camp, Mr. Duke, with his wife, worked to ensure that the land ended up in public hands. The camp site and adjacent acreage were sold to Suffolk County and the Town of East Hampton.

Mr. Duke’s first three marriages, to Alice Rutgers, Elizabeth Ordway, and Diane Douglas, ended in divorce.

From 1974 to 1996, Mr. Duke played a key role on the board and executive committee of the International Rescue Committee, for which he went on missions to help refugees in Cuba and Vietnam. In 1980, Mr. Duke and his son John, both married to sisters born in Cuba, ferried 35 Cuban refugees to the United States during the Mariel boatlift.

In 1995, he went with his wife, Luly, a Cuban-American who emigrated to this country in the early 1960s, on her first trip back to Cuba. He was moved by the plight of the Cuban people, Mrs. Duke said, and they decided that she would found a program, Fundacion Amistad, to assist Cuban children and promote positive U.S.-Cuba relations.

Throughout his life, Mr. Duke held positions at several family companies and served on the boards of many organizations, including as a founding director of the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation and as a vice chairman of the board of trustees at Duke University. That institution began as Trinity College, which was heavily endowed by Mr. Duke’s grandfather and great-uncle.

He received numerous honors including the Save the Children National Award, honorary doctorates from Duke, Drexel, Adelphi, and Long Island Universities, and several presidential citations for his leadership of Boys and Girls Harbor, including one from President Bill Clinton. He was declared a “living landmark” by the New York Landmark Conservancy.

Besides his ongoing work with the Harbor, Mr. Duke was a former commissioner of the New York City Youth Board and was active with Big Brothers, the Henry Street Settlement, and other social service groups.

Mr. Duke had lived in Bellport after leaving East Hampton some years ago, and then moved to Florida. In recent years, he had retraced the events of his life, visiting family, people, and places along with an assistant and companion, Awilda Penney. “We had a wonderful time,” Ms. Penney said.

Besides his wife, Mr. Duke is survived by 10 children. They are Lulita Duke Reed of Ross, Calif., Washington Alcebo Duke and James Buchanan Duke of East Hampton, Anthony Drexel Duke Jr. of East Norwich, Nicholas Rutgers Duke of Charlottesville, Va., John Ordway Duke of Little Torch Key, Fla., Douglas Dreel Duke of Wilmington, N.C., Cordelia Duke Jung of Berlin, Josephine Duke Brown of Petrolia, Calif., and December Duke McSherry of Gainesville, Fla.

Another son, Barclay Robertson Duke, predeceased his father.

Twenty-two grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren also survive. Mr. Duke’s brother, Angier Biddle Duke, a former U.S. ambassador and chief of protocol for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, died in 1995.

A private family funeral service will be held next week in Southampton, after which Mr. Duke’s ashes will be buried at a family cemetery plot, with a Naval Honor Guard in attendance.

A memorial celebration of Mr. Duke’s life will be held on June 2 at 4:30 p.m. at Boys and Girls Harbor in New York City. Memorial contributions have been suggested to that organization at One East 104th Street, New York City 10029.

New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has introduced legislation that would hold anyone who plants or maintains running bamboo on their property responsible for the cost of removing the invasive species from neighboring properties and repairing any damage the roots, called rhizomes, have caused. But for at least two Montauk residents, the protection the legislation offers, while welcome, is many thousands of dollars too late.

“It spreads like wildfire,” Stephen Kelly, who purchased his house on Adams Drive four years ago, said recently. When he bought the house, he noticed his neighbor to the east had a row of bamboo for screening between the properties. “He had a lot of really tall bamboo,” Mr. Kelly said. That tall bamboo began wandering into Mr. Kelly’s yard, in the form of little shoots. Mr. Kelly hired a local landscaper, who brought in a crew that dug up the border area between his property and his neighbor’s and methodically removed each root.

Within a year, the bamboo returned. Back came the landscaper’s crew, digging, and, this time, laying down an underground cinderblock wall.

The bamboo returned. “I confronted my neighbor. ‘This bamboo is costing me a great expense,’ ” Mr. Kelly said he told his neighbor. The neighbor’s reaction? “He shrugged and didn’t say anything.”

Assemblyman Thiele’s bill deals with shrugging neighbors. Based on a law in Connecticut passed late last year, it defines running bamboo as any bamboo in the genus Phyllostachys, including Phyllostachys aureosulcata. The law in Connecticut makes neighbors “liable for any damages caused to any neighboring property by such bamboo, including, but not limited to, the cost of removal of any running bamboo.”

A statewide law would clear up the current patchwork of laws dealing with running bamboo, the assemblyman said after he introduced it last month, “particularly on Long Island. It wouldn’t outlaw or prohibit the plant,” he said, but it would address issues that currently cause neighborly strife. The law would also restrict the planting of running bamboo, requiring a setback from adjacent properties of 100 feet.

“There was a time when it was considered exotic,” Brian Frank, the East Hampton Town Planning Department’s chief environmental analyst, said in April, about the plant’s history in East Hampton. “It had an exotic look, and was a cheap method of screening,” he said.

“From a vegetation standpoint,” he said, “it is a real problem, because it reproduces asexually.”

The rhizomes of the invasive species grow laterally, according to John Mark, a Montauk landscaper who Mr. Kelly called in after his first landscaper failed to bring the plant under control. “They can break through anyplace there is an opening. They can squeeze through or they can go underneath. They come up through asphalt, they can come up through a patio,” Mr. Mark said yesterday. Unchecked, running bamboo can take over an entire yard in just a few years. The roots run about 18 inches below the surface in all directions, unless they meet an obstacle, which they will either go around, or, in some cases, through. According to Mr. Frank, bamboo roots also can wreak havoc on septic systems, as they did on Diane Hausman’s property on Gravesend Avenue in Montauk.

The bamboo not only compromised her septic system, it covered her entire lawn. “It took about seven years,” she said about the spread of the plant from her neighbor’s property, turning what was once manicured green grass into a bamboo forest.

Mr. Mark began work on the unwelcomed growth last October, sawing each stalk down, one at a time, using a weed-eater with a saw blade attachment.

Once cut down, the harvested bamboo stalks are of some value. They are extremely strong, and are used in some countries to build houses. Here, they are considered particularly useful for fencing.

There is an amount of danger in the work, Mr. Mark said. Once the bamboo is harvested, it leaves a stubble about a foot tall of bamboo shoots that are as hard as steel, essentially spikes which can cut an unwary worker. “When we are removing the stems, we have to walk through the uprights. There always is a potential to fall and be injured,” Mr. Mark said.

Next, Mr. Mark brought in a mini-excavator and dug up Ms. Hausman’s entire front yard to a depth of about 30 inches. Every piece of the rhizomes must be pulled out of the ground. Just one left behind can potentially give birth to a new bamboo forest.

He has been monitoring both yards since the removal. “I have not seen anything come up in the yards since,” he said.

Mr. Mark took the rhizome-laced dirt to Bistrian Materials, where it is segregated from any landfill. Then, after the removal is completed, several truckloads of new topsoil are brought in. Normally, this soil would be accompanied by an underground barrier between the properties, but that was not necessary on Ms. Hausman’s property because the neighbor, seeing Mr. Mark’s work, asked him to remove her bamboo, as well.

In the case of Mr. Kelly, a barrier was needed between the two properties, after Mr. Mark removed the unwanted growth. Mr. Mark laid in the ground a high-density polyethylene sheet, 30 inches tall. It is angled so that when shoots hit it, they are forced up toward the surface, where they can be removed. If they were forced down, they would evade the barrier, and continue to reproduce.

The cost of all this? “Anything but the smallest of jobs, you are talking thousands,” Mr. Mark said. The Gravesend Avenue project came in at about $10,000.

Assemblyman Thiele is looking for a sponsor for his bill in the State Senate. He believes it may take two years to wind through both houses and to the governor’s desk. “There is an education process that needs to go on,” he said.

The eye-popping price reportedly paid in the recent sale of 16 acres at 60, 62, and 64 Further Lane in East Hampton Village has attracted the most attention, but the status of two historic landmarks on the property is of greater importance to preservation advocates.

According to the New York Post, Barry Rosenstein, a hedge fund manager and founder of the multibillion-dollar Jana Partners (and before that, Sagaponack Partners), has purchased the property for $147 million, making it the most expensive residential property in the United States. But also significant is a small timber-framed structure situated on the lot at 62 Further Lane, and what will become of it.

The Dominy clock and woodworking shops, respectively dating to around 1797 and 1850, stood on North Main Street in East Hampton from the time of their construction until 1946. Several generations of the family, including Nathaniel Dominy IV, his son Nathaniel V, and his grandson Felix, were renowned for their woodworking and clock and watch-making skills.

In 1946, the two buildings were in disrepair and about to be demolished when Dudley Roberts, the late founder and president of Cinerama Productions and the investment banking firm Roberts & Company, rescued them. He moved them to 62 Further Lane, which he owned, and combined them into a single structure.

Elizabeth Fondaras was the owner of the property in 1996 when Christopher Browne, managing director of the investment banking company Tweedy, Browne, bought it from her. Mr. Browne died at 62, of a heart attack, in 2009, leaving most of his estate to his partner, Andrew Gordon, who lived there until his death in September. The properties were held after Mr. Browne’s death in trusts created by him. A number of family members, two friends, and his chef were reported at the time to have challenged his will.

Mr. Rosenstein bought the property directly from the family, according to The Post, bypassing brokers. Local observers have speculated that the main house, a Modernist building designed by Mr. Gordon, an architect, will be torn down and a new one constructed.

“The survival of the Dominy records, Dominy tools, and even the partial survival of the shops, is unique,” said Charles Hummel, curator emeritus ofthe Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Delaware, which houses reproductions of the two shops as well as more than 800 of the Dominys’ tools, machinery, templates, and other objects representative of their work. “There is nothing else like it that has survived in the United States relating to a family or group of craftsmen that worked both in the colonial period and in the period of the new republic,” Mr. Hummel, a leading researcher on the Dominy craftsmen, said. “When I was asked to lecture by the Regional Furniture Society in England five or six years ago, they said there was nothing like it that survived in the U.K. as well. So [the shops] have incredible importance.”

While Mr. Roberts saved the structures from demolition, said Mr. Hummel, “by caving in the sides of both shops and combining them into one, a lot of important evidence was destroyed.” Yet, he said, “I’ve been inside those shops, and there are still some important pieces of evidence surviving.” 

Despite their age, the structures are in surprisingly good condition, said Richard Barons, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, who has also inspected them from inside. “We were startled at how carefully they were moved, and every little shelf or bracket was still on the walls,” he said. “They are little jewels.”

As one of 25 structures designated timber-frame landmarks by East Hampton Village, said Robert Hefner, the village’s historic preservation consultant, the joined buildings cannot be torn down. “Changes to it are subject to approval by the Design Review Board,” he said.

Like Mr. Hummel and Mr. Barons, Mr. Hefner said he would like to see the buildings returned to their original location. “The village has been interested for a long time in preserving these buildings, putting them back where they were,” he said. “They are nationally important.”

In fact, said Mr. Barons, Mr. Browne had discussed donating the structures to the village. “When Chris died, all that stopped,” he said. “All of us would be pretty excited if those things could be brought back.”

A Springs man with a long criminal history is back in jail, facing multiple felony charges, after a daytime burglary in which he allegedly attacked a 21-year-old woman in Southampton Village Friday morning. The arrest was made after police cornered the man in the yard of a neighboring Breese Lane house, using a Taser to finally bring him down, Southampton Village police said Saturday.

Police received a 911 call at 9:40 a.m. from the woman, who said that a man wearing a ski mask and holding a knife had broken into the house. The alleged burglar, James Edward McErlean Jr., 56, attacked the woman. He was surprised by the woman's father, who returned home, but not before she sustained a lacerated hand and facial injuries, the police said. The assault charge indicates that the knife was used in the alleged attack.

The father chased Mr. McErlean down Breese Lane, with several officers joining in, according to the report, when the defendant was finally cornered. It took at least three officers to take Mr. McErlean into custody.

The Southampton Village Volunteer Ambulance took injured woman to Southampton Hospital, where she was treated for her wounds.

Because of Mr. McErlean's status as a repeat felon, bail can only be set at the county court level, so the defendant was taken to county jail in Riverside after being arraigned in Southampton Village Justice Court Saturday morning.

Mr. McErlean was charged with having committed six felony crimes and five misdemeanors. Because he has been convicted of at least four felony crimes previously, he may qualify for persistent felony offender status. The most serious charge, burglary in the first degree, normally carries a mandatory 5 to 25 years in state prison as a sentence. However, if treated as a persistent felon and convicted of the most serious charge, under New York State's sentencing guidelines Mr. McErlean would be sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in state prison and lifetime supervision upon release.

The defendant has a long history of arrests.

He was arrested on April 4, 2007, on a felony violation of a court order of protection, as well as harassment. Two weeks later, Suffolk County police arrested him on grand larceny charges, according to New York State's court records.

Between April 5, 2010, and Feb. 11, 2012, he was arrested five times by local police in Riverhead, mostly for criminal contempt.

On April 20, 2012, a grand jury in Riverside indicted him for the 2007 grand larceny charges. When he failed to appear in court, New York State Supreme Court Justice Martin I. Efman issued a warrant for his arrest. He was picked up and brought in to be arraigned on July 26 of that year. After posting bail, he failed to appear in court again and Justice Efman issued another warrant.

On March 21, 2013, he was picked up by the Orange County, Fla., sheriff's office as a fugitive, and was extradited back to New York. Back in New York, a second set of grand larceny charges were brought against him, in a separate case. This time, Justice Efman set bail at $10,000, covering the two sets of charges. Mr. McErlean did not post bail and remained jail instead, accruing time served towards his eventual sentence.

On Feb. 26 of this year, he pleaded guilty to four counts of grand larceny. On March 28, Justice Efman sentenced Mr. McErlean to 10 months in jail on each set of charges, as well as being ordered to pay $27,851 restitution to his victims. At the same time, he was also sentenced in Riverhead's local justice court to six months in jail on one criminal contempt charge. All of the sentences were concurrent.

Because of all the time he accrued in jail after being returned from Florida, he had already served much of the time he was sentenced to, and he was soon free.

Now, he is back in jail, perhaps for a much longer stay.

In response to numerous complaints about noise from commercial landscaping and construction activity, East Hampton Village has instituted a hotline and email address at which residents can lodge complaints.

The toll-free telephone number is 844-324-0777, and the email address is [email protected].

After several board meetings at which residents complained about excessive, nearly year-round use of gas or diesel-powered leaf blowers, the village board coordinated a working group, led by Barbara Borsack, the deputy mayor, to develop amendments to its code relating to construction noise and landscaping equipment. Last month, the board adopted an amendment that reduces the hours in which such commercial activity is permitted, though it made concessions to representatives of the affected industries, who called some of the proposed restrictions onerous and unfair.

In a statement, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. called the hotline, email address, and code amendments "a nice balance that will make both sides happy." He urged residents to take advantage of the hotline and email address as needed.

A drug that can reverse the effects of life-threatening overdoses of the opioid drugs heroin, morphine, and oxycodone, which was for many years available only in emergency rooms, is now being used by emergency medical service providers throughout Suffolk County and will soon be available to South Fork police departments.

Narcan, the brand of naloxone most frequently used, is administered when a patient is believed to have taken a drug that has depressed the central nervous or respiratory systems. Until recently, only paramedics were able to administer it, and they did so intravenously or intra-muscularly in the field. As basic life support providers, emergency medical technicians now can provide the time-sensitive intervention through a patient’s nose. A patient can regain consciousness within minutes. If a patient is already in cardiac arrest, however, it can no longer be administered.

The benefits are two-fold, according to Tom Lateulere, the chief of education and training for Suffolk County Emergency Services. “Opioid overdoses have no boundaries. When you’re talking about a drug that can stop somebody from breathing within seconds, this gives the person the best chance of resuscitation,” he said. The potential for a needle-stick injury is also greatly reduced with the use of the antidote through the nose.

The change comes as the county reported a 300-percent rise in heroin-caused deaths over the last four years. In 2013, there were at least 82 heroin deaths, and possibly more; the county medical examiner’s figures are incomplete due to ongoing police investigations. In 2012, there were 83, while in 2011 there were 64 and in 2010 just 37.

The decision to make naloxone part of the standing orders for E.M.T.s in Suffolk County came after a pilot program in 2012. In 223 opioid overdoses treated under the program, there were no adverse reactions and no significant hazards to the emergency medical personnel, according to the State Department of Health. Mr. Lateulere said Narcan was administered 108 times in 2013.  In October that year, the New York State Emergency Medical Advisory Committee approved intranasal administration of naloxone through a mucosal atomizer. The liquid solution is pushed through a padded, porous head with half of it administered through each nostril.

The experiment was supposed to last two to three years, but it was believed to have saved so many lives that the decision to make it part of standing orders for E.M.T.s and get it into the hands of more police officers, and even the public, was made in a year’s time instead. Most of the E.M.T.s on the South Fork received training last month, and police departments are now signing up for it.

East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen said all 25 officers in his department will receive certification when the village holds a training session on May 21. Though there have not been any heroin overdoses in his jurisdictionin recent memory, he considers it only a matter of time. “If it can save one life, it will be worth it,” he said.

Town police officers will also receive the training later this month. Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo said his department would get as many officers certified as possible, and he will look into hosting another training session for others.

Chief Sarlo, whose department covers a much larger area than Chief Larsen’s, said heroin is definitely a problem in the town of East Hampton, though he stopped short of calling it an epidemic — a term used by many to describe its use farther west on Long Island. Going back to 2009, there have been 49 calls classified as overdoses, although only 5 or 6 were from heroin. Some were the result of alcohol poisoning and quite a few were from prescription drugs. Only a handful have been fatal, Chief Sarlo said. He said that his department’s records management system was being improved to better track overdoses.

“It’s an issue. We have had several overdoses. Heroin has come and gone in waves in recent years. It seems to be more prevalent now,” he said, noting the cost and ease of obtaining “a quick fix.”

Last month, Justin Bennett, a former Springs resident, pleaded guilty to a string of burglaries throughout town, which he said were to feed a heroin addition after he got hooked on prescription drugs. In February, the East End Drug Task Force, which was recently formed, arrested nine street dealers from Riverhead who were allegedly selling and buying an especially potent heroin that was traced to at least half a dozen overdoses on the South Fork, including in Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton.

“There’s a whole new generation looking to heroin, which is troublesome,” Chief Sarlo said. “All communities are dealing with it. We’re always actively investigating the drug trade in our community.”

The administration of Narcan is so simple, in fact, that the public is being trained to use it too. Two weeks ago, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, New York Senator Phil Boyle, and the Suffolk County Department of Health announced a partnership in Opioid Prevention Training.

“Through government and community partnerships, we can expand the pool of future first responders and equip them with the training they need to respond to opioid overdoses,” Mr. Bellone said. “Narcan has shown time and again the ability to reverse the effects of an overdose and give those individuals a second chance at life.”

To real estate agents, Amagansett is made up of four parts: the area north of the highway that includes the Bell Estate and Devon, the Dunes, Napeague, and the Lanes, the picturesque grid bordered by Indian Wells Highway on the west and Atlantic Avenue on the east and running south from the highway to Bluff Road. Most of the oceanfront below Bluff Road is preserved. 

That’s not counting the bit of Further Lane that weaves into the hamlet. Nor does it count the area south of Brent’s General Store that has been traditionally called Poseyville by locals, which is considered too small to get its own designation, thus is known simply as “Amagansett fringe.” Yet, Joe Farrell, the ubiquitous builder of large houses, has not discounted it, having built a clutch of houses there. So many of his characteristically large-scale houses have been built next to the area’s tiny houses, the kind with boats decorating front lawns, that some have renamed it Farrellville.

The keen interest that Mr. Farrell has shown in the area may be an indicator of the health of the hamlet’s real estate. Not only has he built a slew of houses there recently, and is in the process of building more, but he has also flooded homeowners with letters asking them to sell their properties to him. First. And directly to him, in order to bypass the middleman.

While Amagansett has been holding to a steady sales momentum over the past decade or so, the Lanes have picked up speed in the past year and a half, according to Htun Han, an agent with Hamptons Realty Group. “Values went up through the roof,” he said, citing a going rate of $2 million “for teardowns on half an acre.” Most properties in the Lanes are on half-acre lots, and their houses, by today’s standards, are fit for the bulldozer.

Going back a decade ago, he said that a house in the Lanes cost about the same as a much newer and bigger one on much more property in the Bell Estate, roughly $900,000 to $1.25 million. As property values in the Lanes have shot up, those in the Bell Estate languished, till about six months ago when they began to catch up, he said.

The appeal of the Lanes is that “you can’t get as close to the ocean anywhere else” going west to Southampton for such relatively bargain basement prices, according to Kieran Brew, an agent at Brown Harris Stevens. And both the beach and quaint Main Street are easily accessible by foot or bicycle.

When Isabel Carmichael and her brother put their house on Indian Wells Highway on the market this winter, they were advised by their listing agent to not ask for a price higher than $1.8 million. After “twisting arms,” they listed it at $2.1 million. Within “about a minute” an offer came in at just under asking from Peter Sabbeth, a builder and partner in Modern Green Home of Sag Harbor, which has a number of houses currently going up in the Lanes. Before the sellers had time to entertain that offer another one came in at asking.

Ms. Carmichael “did the right thing,” and told Mr. Sabbeth about the other offer. Mr. Sabbeth countered at $2.15. What happened next was interesting. The second bidder came it at $2.3, the final bid. Apparently he had heard that his competition was a builder. “I think he thought that it was Farrell and as he’d been burned by Farrell in the past, he wanted to blow him out of the water.”

At the end of the day, Ms. Carmichael was thrilled that the property, part of which had been built in 1860 and had been in her family since 1954, was bought by someone who is not a builder. When she Googled the prospective buyer upon his first bid she was pleased to find that he is a vegan. “I figured somebody crunchy wasn’t going to tear it down,” she said. She’s since noted that the house, now in his hands, has just been reshingled.

Another old house that could easily have been torn down but was rescued instead is on the highway just west of town. In the same family since the ’40s, it was recently bought by Chris and Lisa Goode, a film producer and founder of Goode Green, a roof-top garden company, respectively, who are in the process of heavy renovation, but in essence have “kept the spirit of the aesthetic,” said Mr. Brew, the listing agent along with his wife, Jennifer. The new owners moved it farther in from the road and enlarged it, making the profile symmetrical while keeping true to the roofline. Mr. Brew said that the house is old, but just how old is hard to say. “It was built prior to town records being kept.” One thing is certain: Its original foundation was built on locust posts.

Fortunately, said Mr. Brew, there are not a lot of houses being torn down in the Dunes, an area rife with quarter-acre lots. But there are renovations, especially of vintage midcentury abodes designed by such architects as Alfred Scheffer.

As for Napeague and north of the highway, values of both are “holding steady,” said Mr. Han, especially the area between Abraham’s Path and Oak Lane, where the inventory comprises “the least expensive houses in the Amagansett School District.”

Meanwhile, telltale blue-and-white Farrell Building Company signs are also sprouting up like weeds in the Lanes east of Indian Wells. The builder has five new houses on Old Station Place, a cul-de-sac off Atlantic Avenue, alone. With all the recent activity, some residents who don’t live out east year round might have quite a shock upon their return, said Ms. Carmichael.