Losing Montauk’s History, by Debbie Tuma

Standing on top of rubble — cement blocks, slabs of wood, a pile of bricks, shingles, and mounds of dirt — I could hardly believe my eyes. What used to be my family’s home of 55 years, on the 10th hole of the Montauk Downs golf course, was now completely gone except for the two-car garage at one end and one small remaining wall of the bathroom at the other. In between there was nothing but the cold cement foundation. Now, from the road, you could look straight through what once was the house and see the flag flying on the 10th hole.

Our 2,000-square-foot family ranch, built in 1953 by my father, a charter boat captain of 60 years, and his brother, a local housepainter, was now lying in pieces all around me and piled high in several long blue Dumpsters in the driveway. Looking down into the gaping hole of the basement, I could still picture the playroom on one end, where my sister and I spent countless hours with our Barbie and Ken dolls, their houses, cars, and clothes. 

Where was my father’s workroom, with its woodworking benches, endless tools, decoys, and handmade fishing rods and lures? Where was my mother’s art studio, where she used to paint abstracts of boats and beaches? And the other part of the basement, where my mom stocked shelves with her Mason jars of home-canned tunafish, bread and butter pickles, spaghetti sauce from tomatoes in the garden, and jelly from the beach plums along the sand dunes?

Now there was just a cavernous empty space, like no life had ever been there. Our brick-red shingled ranch, with its black shutters and white roof, with the striped bass weather vane on top, had disappeared into a vacuum that years from now no one will remember. I looked down at the pile of bricks around my feet and wondered to myself, “Is that the chimney or the front patio?”

It was hard to determine, but the hardest part was not seeing the red chimney rising up in the middle of the house — from the fireplace, the focal point of our large living room. My dad was always proud of his fireplace, which took up one whole interior wall and was where our family spent numerous hours huddled during Montauk’s many blizzards, hurricanes, and power outages. He would build fires all winter, lighting up the bleakness of Montauk’s long, cold off-season. Every Christmas, my mother would decorate the mantel with pine boughs, holly, and ornaments.

We all loved the 15-mile view out our huge picture window in the living room. It looked out across the entire golf course and all the way across Long Island Sound to the shore of Connecticut, where on a clear day we could make out the tiny houses. We looked forward to watching a herd of deer come off the golf course to peek in the window every late afternoon.

When my sister and I finally sold the house, in 2009, after my parents had passed away the year before, we never imagined it would one day be torn down, to be replaced by a much larger two-story mansion. As time went on, we heard rumors of a second story being added on, but at least the house would remain intact, we thought. Although the house was dated, the construction was solid and had withstood many hurricanes, snowstorms, and northeasters. My dad had meticulously selected only the finest woods and in the kitchen carefully built knotty pine cabinets, which are hard to come by today. Building this house was his pride and joy.

But over the years, more and more out-of-towners began buying up Montauk cottages and older houses, replacing their Formica countertops with granite and the old linoleum tiles with marble and stone. In more recent years, this trend has expanded to more drastic measures. Rather than simply renovating older houses and commercial buildings, new homebuyers and corporations are choosing to tear down these structures, sometimes even historic ones. 

The character of Montauk is gradually being lost, and new homebuyers aren’t appreciating the charm or well-built construction of the older buildings. The humble shacks of Montauk’s old fishing village, the Leisurama cottages in Culloden Shores, the middle-class shingled ranches of the 1950s and ’60s, and the historic restaurants and motels may all someday be replaced with generic, modern structures that could be “Anyplace U.S.A.”

With so many of Montauk’s original and historic businesses being sold, or up for sale, such as Duryea’s Lobster House, ice house, and restaurant, Shagwong Tavern, East Deck Motel, Deep Hollow Ranch, and now Trail’s End restaurant, what will happen to the culture and character of the Montauk we have known and loved? Will all the buildings be modern and generic? Will we lose our history? Is everything about money, the bigger the better?

I think the renovation of Salivar’s bar and restaurant at the Montauk docks is a good example of what can be done to renovate an existing structure, without tearing it down or losing the character altogether. When it was sold I was scared that it was in bad shape and that we might lose it forever. For 60 years, my dad sat on the same stool every morning at 5 a.m., next to his fellow charter boat captains, before going fishing. The place was always a funky half-bar, half-diner. The walls were covered with great old photos of the fishermen and their friends. After the renovation, the popular neon Salivar’s sign remains. It is still half-bar and half-diner, and although the photos are now online, there is beautiful wood throughout — a bit more modern, but the character is still there.

And Ruschmeyer’s restaurant, one of the oldest around, has been bought and renovated, but the existing building is still there, mostly in its original state.

In the name of progress, and with new generations, things in Montauk must change, but there is a better way to do it than ripping everything apart and tearing down the original buildings. If this were to happen to Trail’s End, which was moved from the fishing village to its present location many decades ago, it would be a shame. My parents met there in 1948, when the late Ed Ecker Sr., former East Hampton Town supervisor, was the bartender. It’s nice to be able to tell these stories to your children and grandchildren. But if all these places disappear, there will be no stories to tell.

I thought of all this upon leaving my parents’ house that day in a surreal state of mind. I don’t want Montauk to become another homogenized, jet set resort town of mega-mansions and modern commercial restaurants. 

“Next they’ll be putting in a boardwalk,” I thought as I looked through the windowless hole of the remaining bathroom wall, where my mother’s favorite lilac bush used to flourish outside. I picked up some bricks from the chimney or the patio, I still wasn’t sure which, and then I noticed a white sign in the dirt. It was the house number, 116, ripped off in a small slice of wood. I stuck it in my pocket as a last keepsake from my childhood home and its memories.

Debbie Tuma is a freelance writer and a host at WLNG Radio. She lives in Riverhead and can be reached at [email protected].