125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, March 2
Half of the business portion of Islip was burned Wednesday afternoon. The fire started in the cellar of the store Clock, Eastman, Hastings & Co. and spread rapidly. The hydrants were frozen and three-quarters of an hour elapsed before water could be obtained. The fire spread to the adjoining block of frame buildings owned by Wesley Wheeler, and then to the H.T. Smith block, in which was located the Islip Herald, owned by W.B. Burling. This block, like the others, was soon swept away.
The total loss on the buildings and stocks is estimated at $75,000.
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The position taken by President Baldwin of the Long Island Railroad in the matter of the proposed tunnel leading to Brooklyn is frank, open, and aboveboard, and business-like to a degree not always met with in handling important public questions of this nature.
“No one has demanded money of me to secure favorable action on the tunnel franchise,” he says, “and therefore I have no personal knowledge that money has been demanded. It is just as well that no one has asked me, because not one cent will I pay for tribute. I am willing to spend all that may be required to defend our rights, but to purchase concessions — never!”
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, March 6
“Did you feel the earthquake?” was the question everyone asked of his neighbor last Saturday night. It was felt by a number of East Hampton residents, but the peculiar part of it was that of four persons seated in the same room only two felt the tremors. Those who felt the quake began calling up their neighbors to verify their suspicions, and in some cases their suspicions were confirmed. But Sunday morning, even before the daily papers were received, it was common knowledge that an earthquake affecting the New England states had occurred.
On Saturday evening some of the local radio fans heard the announcement of the quake from distant stations. No serious damage was reported here, other than the moving of pictures on the walls, a rattling of dishes, and in one or two instances articles dropping off shelves. Over at Sag Harbor the attendants of the Elite Theatre became frightened and the show was interrupted.
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It cost the Long Island Railroad Company approximately $80,000 to keep its lines open and free from snow, ice and sand during the single month of January, 1925. This is more than it cost for the same purpose in any twelve months’ period for several years past.
Heavy snowfalls, followed by sleet, rain and unusually cold weather, which resulted in frozen switches and ice-coated station platforms, aggravated by high winds that blew tons of sand from the beaches onto the tracks, especially in the Rockaways, at Long Beach and west of the Jamaica Bay Trestle, caused the Long Island’s record-breaking expenditure for snow, ice and sand removal in January.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, March 9
At the East Hampton Town Board meeting on March 1, a petition was filed with the Superintendent of Highways, Jed Browne, and the Town Board, requesting that Mr. Browne return the Town Highway truck, the foreman Charles Mulford, and driver, Mike Della Polla, to the Amagansett district. The petition was signed by about one hundred Amagansett residents. The petition was referred by the Town Board to the Superintendent of Highways.
Up to quite recently, the Highway Department had four foremen, and highway equipment was kept in each district. Harvey Cullum in East Hampton is the only one of the four foremen now employed by the Town. Superintendent Browne has pointed out that the other highway foreman jobs had to be abolished because of a $20,000 cut this year in the Highway budget.
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Suffolk County will cooperate financially with the federal and state governments in the establishment of additional U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey triangulation stations throughout eastern Long Island. The sum of $10,000 was voted for that purpose Monday by the Board of Supervisors after Highway Superintendent Harry Tuthill had explained the need for the stations to facilitate mapping and property surveys in this area.
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, March 6
Sag Harbor is the last Village on Long Island to still discharge raw human wastes into its surrounding waters. But the main thing wrong with a new sewage treatment plant proposed for Sag Harbor, according to public testimony at a Department of Environmental Conservation hearing Tuesday, is not that it won’t clean up Sag Harbor waters, as the State has ordered.
It is rather that it won’t do anything to help North Haven with its apparently precarious supply of drinking water. Spokesmen for the Group for America’s South Fork, the East End Council of Organizations, and the Conservation and Planning Alliance all complained that the proposed plant would not actually “recharge” sewage — that is, put back into the ground water fit to drink.
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The East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association thinks President Gerald Ford’s proposal to give farmers a rebate on Federal gasoline taxes is a good idea, after he announced the proposal last week. So good in fact they’d like to see it extended to so-called “sea farmers” — better known as fishermen.
They pointed out that while fishermen contribute a relatively “small share” of the country’s food stock, it’s a “very important share, since fish provides a very large amount of protein. . . . Additionally,” they noted, “some fish are used in the manufacturing of fertilizer and feed for livestock.”
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, March 9
At least 20 New York State legislators think students who go to the state’s public, private, or parochial secondary schools should have to be vaccinated against Lyme disease. But federal health officials say such a practice “does not square with national recommendations.”
A bill introduced last March by Richard F. Brodsky, a Democratic assemblyman from Westchester, would require that students 15 to 18 be inoculated against Lyme. Co-sponsored by 19 other Democratic assemblymen, the bill (A6988) was sent to the Health Committee, amended, and returned to the committee in January.
Should the proposal become law, Lyme would join the list of illnesses against which the state requires immunization for school attendance: poliomyelitis, mumps, measles, diphtheria, rubella, and varicella.
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The pine barrens saga took another twist last week when two of the main environmental groups advocating an extension of the State Pine Barrens Act to the South Fork sued to halt construction in areas of East Hampton and Southampton that might be included in a future comprehensive groundwater protection plan.
As East Hampton Town Board members watched frigidly from their new black chairs on Friday, Richard Amper, the executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, chastised them for allowing development to continue in water recharge areas, then had his assistant serve Town Clerk Fred Overton with a hefty sheaf of legal papers.
“The town should simply halt projects until they can be cumulatively assessed,” he said. “We’ll work with the town, but building in the South Fork pine barrens stops right now.”
