125 Years Ago - 1897
From The East Hampton Star, April 2
Mr. Worthington, the successful candidate for the nomination of collector, at the Amagansett caucus, became so busily engaged in his canvass that he neglected to vote for himself.
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F.A. Cartwright filled Fredrick Gallatin’s ice house with Maine ice this week. The ice is about 18 inches thick and of excellent quality. We understand that Mr. S.S. Conklin has received orders to have Mr. Gallatin’s summer residence in readiness for occupancy in May.
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Improvement seems to be the order of the day. Door yards are being cleaned up, houses being painted and sidewalks repaired. East Hampton people are not behind the rest of the world when it comes to the annual spring cleaning up.
100 Years Ago - 1922
From The East Hampton Star, March 31
Herbert Van Scoy, who for several years has acted for a well known make of car at Glen Cove, has accepted the position as manager of Halsey’s garage at Southampton. This is a branch of the I.Y. Halsey Automobile Co., of which I.Y. Halsey is proprietor. Mr. Van Scoy is taking the place of Andrew Carson, who recently bought the Three Mile Harbor Pavilion. Mr. Van Scoy spent his early boyhood days in East Hampton and is widely acquainted here.
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Wm. Young, East Hampton’s favorite violin player, who has been on the Keith [vaudevillian] circuit for several years, has been the guest of Miss Ethel Tuthill at her home in Montauk, a few days recently.
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It is estimated that nearly three hundred firemen and their wives and friends attended the third annual pool tournament at the firehouse last Friday evening. The audience was seated in three rows of chairs around the four sides of the hall with the pool table in the center.
The first part of the evening the audience listened to radio concerts received from the General Electric broadcasting station at Schenectady and from stations in Pittsburgh, Springfield, Mass., and Newark, N.J. A brand new receiving instrument, loaned by Raymond S. Parsons, was fitted up in the firehouse by Ed Gisburne, superintendent of the local wireless station, the aerial being strung out of the window to an adjacent building.
75 Years Ago - 1947
From The East Hampton Star, April 3
Phineas Dickinson of Montauk, who has rented 1,200 acres of pasture land near Montauk Point and is going in for raising beef cattle in a big way, is a throwback to those early days when eastern Long Islanders were graziers, rather than farmers. Everybody used to raise cattle and horses and sheep. Cattle Day, when stock was driven on Montauk for pasturage from as far west as Patchogue, was May 1; they came “off” on November 1. Phineas’ parents were living at Third House, now Deep Hollow Ranch, when he was born. “Phin” lived there as a small boy.
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In observance of Holy Week and Easter the churches of East Hampton have planned services in keeping with the occasion. Starting with the Maundy Thursday service which will be held in the Presbyterian Church this evening, Thursday, April 3, a complete Easter service will be celebrated.
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Preliminary arrangements for the LIFI Potato Harvest Festival and the coronation of the Long Island Potato Queen of 1947 at the Fairgrounds in Riverhead on Saturday, July 5, were outlined at the first meeting of the Festival Committee this week.
Gov. Thomas E. Dewey is expected to place the crown upon the brow of the pretty farmer’s daughter chosen as Queen and thus set in motion a series of functions and programs featuring the Potato Queen until after Labor Day, it was disclosed. High federal, state and local officials are being invited to the festival.
50 Years Ago - 1972
From The East Hampton Star, March 30
A tremendous amount of thought is being given these days to ways and means of handling solid waste, some of it in East Hampton Town, where changes have taken place at its two sanitary landfill dumps, and more are on the way.
Councilman Richard F. White Jr., who is in charge of the town board’s disposal committee, says “There’s not really a problem here now. But in 25 years, who knows?” Rather than wait to find out, Mr. White is apparently planning to avoid a possible landfill crisis, in which volume might exceed capacity and underground water quality might be threatened.
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The State Department of Transportation is reviewing its final “Environmental Impact Statement” for the proposed 23-mile Sunrise Highway Extension, or Hamptons Bypass, with a prediction that the Statement and a final route recommendation will be ready for distribution in late April or early May.
Revision of the draft Statement has been under way in Albany since early March, when it was returned to the State by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, which asked for “a more detailed environmental analysis.”
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Every week, around this time of year, the Village Voice runs nearly a hundred classified ads for shares in summer houses, a number of them in the East Hampton area. Responses to five of the ads had the following results:
The first person called offered a share in a “group” house at Three Mile Harbor for $540. There would be seven people each weekend, he said, in the house and a neighboring cottage, each of which had two bedrooms, and there would be room for several additional guests. The property included a “private beach” with a dock, and would be available from May 5 to Labor Day.
25 Years Ago - 1997
From The East Hampton Star, April 3
Arguing it would deal a blow to the town’s working class, the East Hampton Town Planning Board objected last week to a proposal to eliminate several hundred acres of commercial-industrial zoning in Wainscott.
The proposed zone change is part of a townwide upzoning package designed to protect open space. More than 139 parcels from Wainscott to Montauk would be affected.
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Ever since the Town Trustees, a body authorized by colonial patent in 1686 to govern East Hampton and own its common lands, adopted a “manifesto” last fall, rumblings have been heard that it will lead to an earthquake.
In the last month, for example, the Trustees, adamant about gaining primary control over everything that happens on the properties they own, have proposed changes in the Town Zoning Code, asked the Town Board to delay final approval of the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, already a decade in the making, and said that “tributaries” should be added to the list of waters, underwater lands, and adjacent beaches they manage.
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The storm that blew through the East End on Monday — with gusts up to 68 miles per hour — may have been springtime’s idea of a slightly early April Fools’ joke, but just to the east in New England the weather was no laughing matter. Meteorologists said Long Island was spared a blizzard, serious erosion, and coastal flooding because of a rare weather pattern. Some might call it luck.
It was the most serious spring snowstorm to hit New England in recorded history, with accumulations of 2 to 3 feet.
