125 Years Ago 1899
From The East Hampton Star, February 24
At the great picture sale last week at Chickering Hall, New York, when Thomas B. Clarke’s collection of American paintings were sold, many artists well known in East Hampton were represented. The sale was the largest of its kind ever held in this country, the prices paid during the four nights’ auction being $234,495.
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Amagansett
Mr. and Mrs. William Rackett went to New York on Friday evening last. Mrs. Rackett has been a sufferer for some years from a dead bone in the ear. Word has been received that a successful operation has been performed. It will be some time before Mrs. Rackett can return home.
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On Tuesday evening just as the people were gathering at Clinton Hall to see “The Schoolmistress” an alarm of fire was given. A straw stack upon the premises of Frank Tillinghast was discovered on fire. A large crowd soon arrived on the scene and the blaze was extinguished. As a stack of wet straw would not easily take fire, it is thought that it was set afire by an incendiary.
100 Years Ago 1924
From The East Hampton Star, February 22
A committee of the Lions Club of Southampton, including the president, Harry C. Robinson, L.E. Terry, and David and Timothy Gilmartin, met a representation of East Hampton business men, numbering about fifteen, at the firehouse Monday afternoon, and discussed means of properly advertising the many attractions and natural advantages in the Hamptons for those people who spend the summer months at seashore and inland resorts.
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Not only will an industry in which more than $15,000,000 is invested on Long Island be put out of business if State Senator Rabenold’s drastic fish bill becomes a law at Albany, but the monstrous Fulton Market and all its various ramifications will be closed. That was the story brought to fishermen from all over the east end of Long Island at a mass meeting held in the Greenport Town Hall Monday afternoon. And the closure of the Fulton Fish Market and fishing industry will also close the doors of boat hardware concerns, twine companies and shipyards, and will send hundreds of fishing vessels into the scrap heap. These facts were brought out by Capt. Brooks of East Marion and Montauk during the conference.
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A powerful forty-foot launch, a suspected rum-runner, was wrecked at Old Landing on the shore of Long Island Sound north of Riverhead on Saturday night during a howling gale.
The motor launch bore no name, but on her side are the characters “k — 13088.” She was evidently a very fast craft, with a powerful engine. It is supposed that the strange craft developed engine or some other trouble and that her occupants decided to hazard running her ashore, where the waves worked their will on her.
75 Years Ago 1949
From The East Hampton Star, February 24
The Father and Son dinner held Tuesday evening in the Session House was very well attended. East Hampton Boy Scouts and Cubs each brought a father or a man friend for an excellent chicken dinner prepared by E.T. Dayton and his committee.
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Plans have been formulated for a spring music festival to include schools from Westhampton to Montauk. The Southampton schools will act as host for the program, which is scheduled for April 9th. The objectives of the project are: to afford interested music students in the various schools the opportunity of becoming acquainted and performing together to provide students with the opportunity of observing what is being done musically in the schools of neighboring communities, to foster musical comradeship among the schools of this area and to provide the public with a better understanding of the objectives of public school music.
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From July 7th to July 26th, Guild Hall of East Hampton is featuring an art exhibition of the work of seventeen prominent artists who either live or summer in this section of Long Island. These artists enjoy impressive reputations, being well represented in museum collections and exhibitions in important metropolitan art galleries.
50 Years Ago 1974
From The East Hampton Star, February 21
A profusion of arguments, resolutions, questions, and plans occupied the East Hampton Town Board during its regular meeting Friday and a two-hour executive meeting two days earlier. Groupers, marinas, tourism, the bypass, the railroad, and the ombudsman were among the matters pondered.
Limiting the abundance of groupers’ cars was the object of one resolution passed Friday: There may now be no more than one “motorized vehicle” per guest room and two per “family” on any lot “whereon there is located a rooming house where the proprietor is a tenant.”
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It may be said that the residents of East Hampton can be divided into two classes, newcomer and old-timer, by one test — whether they can remember the smell of the Promised Land Fish Factory in full operation when the wind was northeast.
Six years had gone by since such an occasion when it was learned this week that those staunch in their nostalgia were unlikely to ever smell the real thing again.
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Montauk
Montauk resort owners and fishermen are making preparations for a potential gasless summer, but there is generally a feeling of cautious optimism in the air. Members of the Chamber of Commerce will be holding meetings during the coming months to see what can be done to ensure a successful season.
25 Years Ago 1999
From The East Hampton Star, February 25
Although there is no “For Sale” sign on the front gates of 16 Ferry Road on North Haven, the waterfront house owned by Thomas Mottola, the head of Sony Music Entertainment, is available for the taking to anyone with $9.75 million, the reported asking price.
Mr. Mottola bought the property, a carriage house on the former Joseph Fahys estate, in 1997, and has since sunk millions of dollars into renovating it and nearly doubling its size, while adding a central tower with sweeping views of the bay.
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The tone was sharp and the mood was bitter at the East Hampton Town Trustees meeting on Tuesday as neighbors came out in force to express outrage at the “massive bulldozing” of Sammy’s Beach, a popular stretch of wild beach west of the entrance to Three Mile Harbor.
Over the last three weeks, the beach was scoured and its plant life leveled in preparation for receiving the spoils of a county dredging project expected to begin in the harbor next week.
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The State Department of Environmental Conservation has cut East Hampton Town some slack on when and how the town must permanently close its Montauk landfill. It is relaxing the deadlines so the town may reconsider whether to cap all or part of the 15.5-acre garbage mound.
“They do seem to be moving in the right direction. The important point is, they’re giving us some consideration. . . . That’s a minor victory in itself,” said James Hewitt, a leader of a group of Montauk residents and business owners who feared financial and environmental disaster would result from mining the entire landfill.
