Steve Long, who took the helm of the East Hampton Historical Society in November 2021, has been fascinated by history for most of his life. During a conversation in his office at Clinton Academy, he spoke of his interest in dinosaurs at age 4, itself not so unusual, but growing up near Philadelphia in Bucks County, Pa., "we were surrounded by history related to the American Revolution, and I just loved the stories of the past."
He majored in history at Middlebury College in Vermont, and wrote his thesis on the Middle Ages. A professor there, Pardon Tillinghast, was a medievalist, "and I loved his excitement about the past, it was infectious." The thesis might have taken a different direction, he remarked, if the medievalist had been teaching, "say, South Asian history."
Mr. Long went on to earn a master's degree in New York University's Archives and Public History program, in collaboration with the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. While visiting there as a student, he met a woman, an immigrant to the U.S., "and it was so transformative to be in a place where we talked about the history of immigration" with someone who was "living that same experience, in the late 20th century."
He left the building determined to find a way to work there, and he did, starting as an intern, a part-time educator in the visitors center, and winding up as the vice president of collections and education. After 13 years he felt ready to be a museum director, and began looking for an available post.
That he found it at the Children's Museum of the East End might seem counterintuitive for a historian, but "I've always thought children's museums are some of the most cutting-edge museums in the country."
Mr. Long took the job in June 2008. "I thought I'd be there for a couple of years, get a little bit of museum director experience, and then go back to New York or wherever." A couple of years turned into 13, during which he met his future wife, who was living in Montauk.
"She joked that she would be willing to move as long as it was no more than 20 miles from the ocean," which set some limits on where his next job might be. More important, "I loved CMEE. I loved the organization."
Almost immediately after he came on board, however, the economic downturn hit, and the trustees of the museum, which had been open less than three years, were considering closing it. Even before the recession, Mr. Long said, "the perception of the organization was that it was only for summer people. Then came the financial collapse. But we all banded together, the board was great, the staff was great, and we just pushed through."
Twelve years later came the pandemic. As at all cultural institutions, the fund-raisers that are their lifeblood had to be canceled. "I said to our supporters that I hoped we could count on their help even if we couldn't hold the benefit events, but many people said they were directing their philanthropy toward addressing the pandemic."
Leah Oppenheimer, the museum's director of community outreach, pointed out that many of the underserved families who took part in the museum's programs were undocumented and didn't trust food pantries. "She said they trusted coming to us, they didn't even know where the food pantries were. So we decided we needed to fund-raise for our own food pantry."
To those who felt a food pantry wasn't the mission of the museum, "I said we're supposed to be providing opportunities for kids to learn through play. If they're hungry, they're not going to be able to play, and if they can't play they're not going to be able to learn." It turned out that while donors were unwilling to give money for the museum's electric bill, for example, they would donate to provide food for the kids.
Almost 100 families came to the museum every week. Because of the pandemic, "We had this whole system where we would get cadres of volunteers, the food would be delivered, and we'd pack it into boxes. Everybody got the same thing because they couldn't come inside to 'shop.' It really saved so many families, but it also saved the organization -- because we became first responders."
The food pantry is still going strong.
When he started at the museum, Mr. Long said, about 5 percent of the children were immigrants. He estimates that figure has grown to a quarter or a third of the museum's attendance. All the material is bilingual.
While at CMEE, he was approached several times about moving to the East Hampton Historical Society. Remembering his own experience at the Tenement Museum, he concluded that there were good people at CMEE who might leave if they didn't get a chance to move up, just as he had at the Tenement Museum.
Even though he'd been living in East Hampton all that time, Mr. Long admitted that he didn't know much about the town's history when he arrived at the historical society.
"That's one of the challenges of the position. It's such a small town, but the history is so vast. We have the cultural history, the economic history, the history of the arts, the commercial history, all of these layers."
"You can teach any aspect of American history through the lens of East Hampton. Talking about pre-European settlement, before there was an East Hampton, you can teach about Indigenous cultures and native settlements, you can talk about the 13 colonies, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, you name it."
Speaking of the Industrial Revolution, he noted that cheap machine-made furnishings helped end the long reign of the East Hampton Dominy woodworkers, artisans widely known for their furniture and clocks. When East Hampton Town was offered the Dominy house and clock shops for $6,000 in the early 1940s, no benefactor came forward. Dudley Roberts, a summer resident, eventually bought and preserved the two shops on his Further Lane property, but the house was dismantled in 1946. Most of the Dominys' surviving tools were acquired 10 years later by the Winterthur Museum in Delaware.
The shops were given to East Hampton Village in 2016. It was serendipitous, to say the least, that the village still owned the exact lot on North Main Street where the house and shops had stood. The Dominy Shops Museum opened to the public in August.
The historical society is developing a long-term strategic plan, a key component of which is the creation of a storage center for its collection at Mulford Farm. "We have 20,000 artifacts that are scattered all over the place," Mr. Long said, noting that as long ago as 1980 a museum preservationist had recommended a centralized storage center.
"We have to make it a reality. Our collections are too important, and we need to have physical and intellectual control over the objects. We're in the middle of a capital campaign to raise money for it." He also discussed plans to restore the Mulford farmhouse so the interior looks as it did in the 1770s.
As an example of the "crazy things we have" in the collection, Mr. Long cited a wig that once belonged to the Rev. Samuel Buell, the third minister of the Meeting House Church in the 18th century. That wig was once borrowed by Colonial Williamsburg to help its wigmakers learn how to make authentic hairpieces for their costumed interpreters.
Mr. Long stressed the importance of school visits to the town's historic sites. "When we find out about where we lived, when that building was built, and who used to live here, then you feel like you're part of the community. You're not an outsider anymore. That's what I hope people who've been here for 12 generations or people who've been here for 12 days will learn about the community, and feel a sense of connection by understanding its past."
