Villages

Dozens of Muslim men, women, and children gathered on April 10 at Agawam Park in Southampton Village to celebrate Eid ul-Fitr and break their Ramadan fast together with a multicultural potluck-style celebration. The observance of this Muslim holiday wasn't the only topic on their minds.

This photo from the Amagansett Historical Association shows Anastasie Parsons Mulford (1869-1963) with her arm around her daughter, Louise Parsons Mulford (1899-1963). They ran the Windmill Cottage boarding house for many years.

Hang tight, Montauk — yes, the White’s Drug and Department Store building has a new owner, but the potential loss of the hamlet’s only pharmacy is not a foregone conclusion. That’s because the building’s new owner is a doctor himself who said he understands why pharmacies are important.

Earth Day on Monday brings with it the kickoff weekend for the East Hampton Town Litter Action Committee’s No Fling Spring, and there will be cleanup efforts all over town.

A simple brick patio before the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals became intriguing, what with the related history of flouting both Z.B.A. and court decisions and accusations of insider influence.

This week’s highlight? The day in 1974 when the town board allowed police officers to sport mustaches and sideburns, but not beards and goatees. Please read on.

Two weeks ago, a woman who answered a call to Zero Bond in Manhattan denied that the private social club — which offers its members space for meals, drinks, and meetings — was looking to open in East Hampton. This week, however, an attorney representing the Hedges Inn, with which Zero Bond is negotiating a lease, said, "We're not denying that at all."

More blasts from The Star’s past.

In the photo seen here from The Star’s archive, Perle Fine prepares a painting for a show at the Upstairs Gallery on Newtown Lane in the 1970s.

During the solar eclipse on Monday, when approximately 89 percent of the sun was blocked out by the moon here, it was both a communal and a solitary experience for those taking it in at a watch party at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton. The field behind the museum was dotted with 100-plus voyeurs, in small groupings on lawn chairs and blankets, staring with solar-safe spectacles, taking in every second of the hot action.

About the earthquake centered in New Jersey and felt here on Friday: “In actuality this is, on a relative basis, a big deal, but yet 4.8 is not big by global standards,” William Holt, a professor of geophysics at Stony Brook University, said that day, a few hours after the shaking stopped. “We’ve had smaller ones, three or four over the last 30 years, in the Long Island area.”

At about 10:23 a.m. on Friday people across Long Island and as far away as Albany and New Jersey reported feeling buildings shake and sway slightly, the result of an earthquake that registered 4.8 on the Richter scale in New York and New Jersey.

In the spring of 1933, 25 East Hampton High School seniors and two chaperones took a class trip to Washington, D.C. In this photo they are seen at Mount Vernon.

In 1949 the village green flagpole came crashing down in a high wind. Read all about it, and much more ripped from the pages of Ye Olde Star, right here.

According to Billboard, 49.61 million vinyl albums were sold in 2023. That marked the 18th consecutive year of growth in the format. And as the appeal of vinyl record albums has continued to expand, Craig Wright, the owner of Innersleeve Records in Amagansett, is following suit by nearly doubling his store's size.

The second annual East Hampton Village Hamptons Whodunit festival, which features mystery and crime authors, interactive simulated crime scenes, walking tours, panel discussions, and escape rooms, will be launched next Thursday and will continue through next weekend.

New Yorkers are in for quite the show on Monday afternoon: A total solar eclipse is coming our way, and here on the South Fork, astronomers say people will be able to see between 83 and 90 percent totality.

If given the opportunity, a turkey vulture would eat you, your kids, and your little dog, too. Other bird species may be struggling, but the turkey vulture is doing just fine eating dead things. Yes, with increasing signs that the end is nigh, the turkey vulture is a strong candidate for Bird of 2024.

It was 1899, and Telegraph Operator McCord called it quits. Plus other tidbits from The Star of Yore.

Michele L’Hommedieu Hofmann had no idea until retiring last fall and starting to research her family history how prominent a role her great-great-grandfather James H. L’Hommedieu had played in Long Island’s late-19th-century architecture. On a trip to New York that included a stop at an East Hampton house he designed for Robert Southgate Bowne, a founder of the Maidstone Club and first president of the Long Island Rail Road, she and her family got a crash course in L’Hommedieu’s work.

On July 16, 1889, while staying in Lenox, Mass., Sarah Diodati Gardiner Thompson wrote to her daughter Sarah Thompson Gardiner, who was vacationing at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Family news was top of mind.

Window strikes kill up to a billion birds annually and rank up there with cats and habitat destruction as the leading causes of recent steep declines. After the recent death of a much-watched Eurasian eagle-owl that was set loose from the Central Park Zoo, a bill calling for bird-friendly building measures has been revived in the New York Assembly and Senate.

The East Hampton Village Fire Department doesn’t usually respond to fires in the middle of the Ozark Mountains, but in a sense, after donating a Spartan pumper fire truck, replete with 4,000 feet of hose and a 500-gallon water tank, to the Eminence Area Volunteer Fire Department in Missouri Friday, it’s done just that.

A barber moves his shop downtown over a century ago and finds much success. And other notes to charm and delight from the venerable Star.

The mystery over a painted bronze statue of John Steinbeck and his dog Charley, which suddenly appeared in Sag Harbor’s Steinbeck Park this week, has been solved. 

The Maritime Folklife Oral History Collection at the East Hampton Library contains interviews and transcripts with Dan King and his crew, among other fishermen and their families. The transcript seen here shows a discussion with Dan’s wife, Marsha King.

Holy Week services begin on Sunday, and churches here have special schedules throughout the week. 

Steve (Puck) Dolan retired from the Montauket in December after 38 years, but Montauk isn’t done with him just yet: He will serve as grand marshal of the 62nd Montauk Friends of Erin St. Patrick’s Day parade, which will liven up the hamlet with belated Irish cheer on Sunday starting at noon. 

PSEG Long Island crews have been in Montauk since mid-February working on “circuit reliability upgrades” that are aimed at reducing outages during severe weather.

After Jimmy Ernst died, a huge bed / piece of art from his father, the surrealist Max Ernst, had to be moved from Jimmy’s Lee Avenue house. It wasn’t easy.