Villages

Take a trip into the past, Star-style.

Robert Chaloner, who was instrumental in establishing Stony Brook Medicine as a trusted partner and provider of high-quality health care on the East End following the Stony Brook and Southampton merger in 2017, has announced he is stepping down as chief administrative officer.

Martha Howard Prentice Strong (1851-1949), a founding member of the Garden Club of East Hampton, made this scrapbook documenting her trip to Arizona from 1936 to 1937.

I’m not sure if Leonard Cohen was into birds, but if he was, he might have appreciated the mess that is the European starling.

In 1898, three boats gave chase to what was thought to be the largest whale ever seen along the coast. And more from the history-rich pages of The Star.

“Our dream is for people to really move up that economic ladder and be able to provide for their families. In Suffolk County, it takes a lot to meet those standards,” said Lukas Weinstein, a social worker who serves on the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center’s community advisory board and helps in the Teach Me How to Fish program. Through that program, a job fair in the construction trades is planned for Wednesday night.

“In my mind I thought one of the kids asked a coach if he could go down and hold his breath. Then I heard one of the teammates say, ‘Hey, you want me to tell him to come up?’ And the coach said, ‘Yes,’ ” recalled Jason Brunner, a RECenter lifeguard who was on duty on Feb. 1 and was recognized with a proclamation from the East Hampton Village Board for his role in helping to save the boy.

“We pretty much lost everything,” said Geary Gubbins, whose sporting goods shop, Gubbins, was one of several East Hampton Village businesses that experienced major losses this week when their basements were flooded on Sunday. "The water was up to the ceiling."

John Howard Payne (1791-1852) wrote and composed “Have a Care Mon Ami,” the sheet music for which is seen here, around 1833, for a musical farce called “Fricandeau, or the Cook and the Coronet.”

On March 4, 1898, The Star reported that "work has progressed on the bicycle path on Main street in a satisfactory manner this week. Hundreds of loads have already been carted gratuitously, and although the cycle club well knows that it has undertaken a big job, it feels greatly encouraged by the hearty support being given by the citizens."

Sultan Kilic was sleeping in her sixth-floor apartment in Adana, Turkey, with her 10-year-old son, Cagan, at 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 6, when the earth began to speak, and their building began to shake. “We formed a ‘life triangle’ and waited to die,” she recalled this week in Sag Harbor, where she is now staying with her son.

A break in a water line discovered Sunday morning in East Hampton Village caused major flooding at a number of downtown businesses, including Tutto Caffe, Bonne Nuit, Valentino, and Gubbins. Efforts to pump out basements were stalled for nearly eight hours as PSEG struggled to shut down power to affected areas.

Two very different narratives have emerged as the Maidstone Gun Club seeks to renew its land lease with East Hampton Town and fight off a lawsuit that threatens its future altogether. In one narrative, a number of Wainscott residents push for the club’s permanent closure, painting it as a dangerous nuisance. But the other narrative — the Maidstone Gun Club’s point of view — is rarely heard, owing to the low profile its members intentionally keep.

Starting Monday, workers who rely on the South Fork Commuter Connection to get them eastward will notice schedule changes to the Montauk train line that should be rider-friendly.

Beleaguered Town Pond, low on water, high on invasive plants, was again on the East Hampton Village Board’s agenda Friday, in the form of a resolution providing $9,175 for the “hand removal of surface algae” from the once pristine water body. “The pond is frustrating, there’s no doubt about it,” commented Mayor Jerry Larsen. “This algae pops up pretty quick. Because we’re having such a warm winter, this weed is growing very rapidly.”

This logbook tracks the voyage of the Daniel Webster, which set out from Sag Harbor for the Pacific in 1833 seeking whales. Capt. Philetus Pierson was at the helm.

From a century ago, documenting the plight of the Montauk Indians. And more from the pages of The Star of yore.

Three changes to the operation of its beaches were on the East Hampton Village Board’s agenda Friday, all of them with an eye to maximizing income from the village’s top resource.

Lacking the kind of synergy between restaurants and retail that might draw more off-season shoppers, Amagansett's Main Street on a winter weekday can feel in need of a bit of revival. That will all change when the high season arrives, but what has people talking now is the news last month of the sale of the Main Street Tavern building and how a restaurant in that spot could boost morale on Main Street.

The closest George Washington got to East Hampton was probably Roe Tavern, seen here, in Setauket during his 1790 tour of Long Island. Its proprietor was part of the Culper Spy Ring.

East Hampton Town’s training for future lifeguards and for summertime participants in its Junior Lifeguard ocean readiness program will begin on March 5 in the pool at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.

From 1923, a report of the tragic death by suicide of a gray squirrel, and how his home in a Main Street elm was swiftly taken over by a doppelganger in black fur.

The Amagansett Village Improvement Society, in carrying out its mission to keep the hamlet beautiful, is having trees pruned on Main Street from the Amagansett School east to St. Michael’s Lutheran Church. The work, which is being done by Whitmores, will continue through the rest of this month. Look for the AVIS banner to see which trees are being pruned.

This photo shows a group gathered in front of the East Hampton Steam Laundry, which experienced several fires, a variety of owners, and a number of iterations.

Red-breasted mergansers rely on the open waters of our winter bays and harbors from November until April. They’ll be there if you walk anywhere along the bay side of the South Fork, between Southampton and Montauk. While they prefer salt water, they also frequent Hook Pond, Sagaponack Pond, and Georgica Pond.

Remembering Pedro Moreno, soccer player, house painter, and friend to many.

The shape of catastrophes to come? In 1998 the Kellehers of Sagaponack saw their beachfront house collapse into the sea. And more from past pages of The Star.

It was a moment six years in the making: Kim Covell, founder of the Flying Point Foundation for Autism, has signed a lease with Southampton Youth Services to establish a community center for teens and young adults with autism, the organization announced on Jan. 24. To be located within 1,500 square feet of the existing S.Y.S. building on Majors Path in North Sea, The Point, as it will be called, has a target opening date of mid-March.

Among those experimenting with a popular new artificial intellegence web tool called ChatGPT is Rabbi Joshua Franklin of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, who used it to “write” a sermon in December, then had his congregation guess its source. The tool's capabilities have people like Rabbi Franklin pondering “the qualities that make us who we are.”

This image from the Amagansett Historical Association’s Carleton Kelsey Collection shows Emil Gardell (1876-1962) driving a Boston Cutter sleigh through the snow.