From The East Hampton Star’s photo archive, this Christmas card, sent by Lion Gardiner (1878-1936) and Ida S. Loomis Gardiner (1881-1973), shows the Gardiner House on Ocean Avenue covered in snow. The Gardiners, it reads, “send Christmas greetings and best wishes for the New Year.”
The house shown here still stands at 32 Ocean Avenue. It was built by James L’Hommedieu of Great Neck for Jessie Draper Bowne and Robert Southgate Bowne (1842-1896) between 1888 and 1889. Bowne was president of the Long Island Rail Road and a founder of the Maidstone Club. The house features a gambrel roof with half-timbering and stucco in the gables and a large central doorway.
By January of 1925, the Gardiners had moved into 32 Ocean Avenue, not long before Jessie Draper Bowne’s death. Lion married Ida in 1913; it was his second marriage. The card is undated, but it had to have been sent sometime between their purchase of the house in late 1924 and Lion’s death in 1936.
For those well versed in East Hampton’s history, the Gardiner family’s enthusiasm for repeating first names can cause some serious confusion. This Lion Gardiner was the son of (Elizabeth) Coralie Livingston Jones Gardiner (1851-1915) and John Lyon Gardiner (1842-1910) and a brother of the well-remembered Winthrop Gardiner (1887-1970). Coralie and John Lyon spent extensive time in Europe, traveling with their children, and their son Lion was born in Stuttgart, Germany, during one of these trips. Lion was also the 13th proprietor of Gardiner’s Island, although in 1915 he leased the island to Clarence MacKay.
Christmas cards became mainstream for Americans in the 1870s, and early ones featured printed artwork. Personalized photographic-style cards became mainstream after evolutions in printing technology made such cards more affordable in the latter half of the 20th century. While a few people printed personalized photographic-style images on Christmas cards back in 1924, this required advanced technology typically accessible only to wealthy Americans, like the Gardiner family.
Andrea Meyer, a librarian and archivist, is the head of collection for the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
