125 Years Ago 1899
From The East Hampton Star, January 6
A snow storm from the north early Sunday morning brought the snow plow out and over the railroad that day to clear the track for the regular trains.
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The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society is preparing to give the people of East Hampton and vicinity a rare treat in the form of a dramatic entertainment. From time immemorial East Hampton has been noted for its dramatic talent, and the committee in charge of the production is fortunate in having secured some of the best local talent. The play to be given is one of Pinero’s famous melodramas, and it is doubtful if Clinton Hall is large enough to hold all the people who will want to witness the presentation. The date has not been set, but we are informed it will be early in February.
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James E. Gay’s new building at the Hook is about completed. On the first floor Mr. Gay will open a first-class harness shop, with a competent harness-maker in charge.
100 Years Ago 1924
From The East Hampton Star, January 4
A L.I.R.R. crossing guard at Lynbrook, James Egan by name, was fined $30 last week for being intoxicated while on duty. He has been dismissed from the service.
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The new year has brought few changes in the town government of East Hampton. The town board remains the same, with one exception. William T. Vaughan of Sag Harbor is a new member of the board, taking the place of Justice Everard Jones, who was defeated for re-election last November. Supervisor Kenneth E. Davis continues to serve as the board’s head and Lyman B. Ketcham as clerk.
Kenneth Miller of Amagansett takes John Howard’s place as overseer of the poor. Ralph Dayton takes the position of town tax receiver, held the past two years by Arthur Miller of Montauk.
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An interesting meeting of the Westminster Guild was held Monday evening, December 17, at the home of Mrs. Cortland Mulford. The next meeting will be held January 8, at the home of Miss Anna Hedges, Main Street. Members are requested to bring bureau scarfs.
75 Years Ago 1949
From The East Hampton Star, January 6
The population of Long Island is now well in excess of five million persons, according to the 1948 estimates of the Long Island Association, based on studies just concluded.
The Association’s estimates put the Island’s population at approximately 5,134,000 persons, broken down to county totals as follows: Brooklyn (Kings), 2,865,000; Queens, 1,485,000; Nassau, 551,000 and Suffolk, 233,000.
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The annual Feast of Lights and Christmas Candlelighting Pageant was held by the choir and young people of St. Luke’s Church on Sunday evening, January 2, at 7:30 o’clock, before a large congregation. The Pageant impressively and reverently portrayed in pantomime the prophecies of the coming of Christ, the Nativity Scene and adoration of Shepherds and Wise Men, the calling of the Twelve Apostles and the ministry succeeding the Apostles, and the sending of the Light of Christ into the world through the lighting of the Congregation’s individual candles.
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The great importance of a successful 1949 March of Dimes campaign was stressed today by Mrs. Mabel I. Heath, County campaign chairman, who pointed out that epidemics during 1948 had made serious inroads on the funds of local chapters as well as on the emergency fund of national headquarters.
50 Years Ago 1974
From The East Hampton Star, January 3
The East Hampton Town Board customarily observes the New Year by welcoming its new members and passing a great many resolutions, rarely controversial ones, at an “organizational meeting” on Jan. 2. It passed 48 resolutions yesterday. Its two new members this year, however, were Democrats, and several resolutions, for the first time in recent memory, were passed not unanimously, but by a vote of three to two. Two more resolutions, again for the first time, were defeated by a vote of three to two.
The meeting began calmly enough with a “state of the Town” address by Supervisor Judith Hope, who had defeated the former Republican Supervisor, Eugene E. Lester Jr., in November’s election. She expressed several “hopes” for what the board might do to “improve the quality of local government.”
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The Guild Hall Players will meet at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Guild Hall, and will hold open auditions then and at 8 p.m. Wednesday for Agatha Christie’s “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The play is to be performed toward the end of March; 11 male and three female parts must be filled.
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A little-noticed set of “Guidelines for Long Island Coastal Management,” published last month by the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board, serves as a telling backdrop to the warning this week on the possibility of astronomical tides and the first part of a “Town Plan for Open Spaces,” prepared by Thomas M. Thorsen, Town planner.
The guidelines in the report were developed by the Regional Planning Board’s Marine Resources Council and designed to be a tool for all County, Town, and Village governmental agencies, in an attempt to see Long Island reverse “the trend of estuarine and shoreline deterioration.”
25 Years Ago 1999
From The East Hampton Star, January 7
“There is a really big pile of potatoes in there,” Marilee Foster says, pointing to one of the barns clustered behind her brother Dean’s house in Sagaponack.
She’s not kidding.
Inside the cool, dimly lit building is a massive, floor-to-ceiling mountain of spuds — more than most people have ever seen in one place. Some are as big as your head, others as tiny as a Ping-Pong ball.
She points out how many smaller potatoes there are in the pile. The sign of an off year.
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As of now, under the East Hampton Village Zoning Code, an owner of the Creeks, the village’s largest single lot at 57 acres (2.5 million square feet), could tear down its main house and build a residence with nearly a million square feet of living space.
The code’s only current limit on square footage, or “gross floor area,” in an R-160 (four-acre) district is 20 percent of lot coverage (multiplied by two for a two-story dwelling).
Mindful of Ira Rennert’s 100,000-square-foot compound, including a main house of 66,000 square feet, on more than 60 acres in Sagaponack, where Southampton Town Code restrictions did not differ greatly, the East Hampton Village Board has decided to make sure nothing similar happens here.
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When Jerome and Sheila DeCosse bought a house on Dunemere Road, East Hampton, in the early 1980s, they found an old bell on the back porch.
This is not your everyday doorbell. With its cast-iron yoke, it weighs several hundred pounds. Its peal is clear and authoritative. A brass plaque fixed to its base reads: “In memory of the days of steam, locomotive bell from the Cannon Ball, 1911.”
The DeCosses did not know where the oversized doorstop came from. They were told that a member of the Pullman family, famous for its railroad sleeping cars, may have lived in the house at one time, but they could not verify it.
