Villages

While much discussion about the renovation of Guild Hall has centered around interior issues, specifically the John Drew Theater, at last week’s East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, at which Guild Hall sought a special permit and variances needed to make the changes, the board strove early on to focus comments only on the exterior of the building and grounds. “There’s a lot of callers on the line, and a lot of the callers are calling about the inside of Guild Hall, over which we have no jurisdiction,” Phil O’Connell, chairing the meeting, said.

This cyanotype shows Grace Binney Winkley Wilson (1862-1952), who spent summers in East Hampton between 1891 and 1895, posing with a racket on a grass court, a tennis net directly behind her.

Eleven months after a public groundbreaking ceremony and eight months after the actual breaking of ground, substantial progress has been made on “Forever Home,” a significant re-envisioning and renovation of the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons campus in Wainscott.

Eleven days ago, on April 3, the northern gannets invaded Sag Harbor. A friend sent a video of several hundred crowding the waters surrounding Long Wharf. Above them, the sky teemed with more. In 20 years of birding around Sag Harbor, I had never seen more than a handful from the wharf.

On social media, Mark Smith has shared only a few of the pictures he’s taken of these ordinary moments at a refugee center in southeast Poland, just a couple of miles from the Ukraine border, yet there is something about them that serves to make the everyday consequences of the war in Ukraine very palpable for people an ocean away who can easily push it out of their thoughts.

Neighbors of a potential two-story brewery and restaurant at 17 Toilsome Lane had argued that the village had misinterpreted the zoning code. Their appeal was denied.

The local jail passes muster in 1922, the county pushes smallpox vaccinations in 1947, and the day in 1972 when the sloop the Sojourn came aground at Montauk.

Irwin Levy led a successful hike through the studios of the late Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park connecting nature and art, and then thought, why not nature and history?

In the 18th and 19th centuries, churches here allowed parishioners to rent or buy pews, often charging more for those closest to the pulpit. Pew deeds or titles could be passed down to heirs as families grew, but during the 20th century the practice disappeared.

"I've always loved Montauk," said Jennifer Fowkes, the new executive director of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce.

The wrecking ball is swinging, and the $1.4 million renovation and expansion project for the Lars Simenson Skatepark in Montauk is underway. The hope is that it can be finished by mid to late-summer.

The waters surrounding Plum Island are teeming with abundant life, not unlike the Long Island Sound, Peconic Estuary, and other nearby waterways. But a series of scientific dives below the surface last summer revealed something that sets Plum Island's marine environment apart from the rest. "There wasn't any trash," said Dr. Matthew Schlesinger, chief zoologist with the New York Natural Heritage Program, which completed the survey along with InnerSpace Scientific Diving.

Despite the feeling of calm that has settled in after mask mandates were lifted, despite the significantly lower case numbers and deaths across the United States, Covid is not finished with us — or we with it.

The Amagansett Library has launched a free seed "catalog" with vegetable, herb, and flower seeds available for library users to take and grow at home. The project is in partnership with Amber Waves Farm, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and home gardeners and will provide resources and programs this summer about gardening for food and fun.

The peanut craze of 1897, the telephone strike of 1947, and the day in 1997 that the G&T Dairy Chicken House closed for good.

The Breakwater Sailing Center, a.k.a. the Breakwater Yacht Club, in Sag Harbor, will host an open house on Tuesday to introduce a women's sailing initiative and new programs for the summer. "Historically, women are pretty much underrepresented as adult sailors," explained Joan Butler, a sailor, nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, and a Breakwater member.

A strain of avian flu that state officials have deemed "highly pathogenic" has arrived on the South Fork, where a farm in Sag Harbor lost a flock of about 6,000 game birds on March 23 due to the infection and its potential to spread. The outbreak has poultry farms here on high alert.

The Amagansett Presbyterian Church and the Stony Brook University School of Health Professions will have a free health fair on April 9 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Scoville Hall on Meeting House Lane.

April Fools’ Day may be an unofficial holiday traditionally observed with pranks, jokes, and hoaxes every April 1, but this broadside for the “Fantastic, Grand Barbaric, and Cavalric Parade of April Fools” came from a Sag Harbor parade marking the occasion on April 3, 1871.

Stony Brook Medicine’s three hospitals, including two on the East End, have once again been named LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leaders by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

The Sag Harbor Cinema and the Plain Sight Project, an initiative that aims to identify all enslaved people, as well as free people of color, who lived and worked on the East End and other Northern towns in America, have together received a $200,000 federal grant sponsored by Senator Charles E. Schumer.

The eastern phoebe is just starting to show up on the East End after a winter down South, bringing with it the promise of coming warmth and humidity — and bird song.

Rabbi Joshua Franklin of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons will travel to the Polish-Ukrainian border on April 9, along with a delegation of about 25 American and Israeli rabbis who will partner with organizations that are actively assisting Ukrainian Jews and others who have fled Russia’s invasion of their country.

An awful lot of people are getting sick with one thing or another in the weeks since New York State's mask mandate was lifted. “In prior years, this is when flu season is just ending, but right now, it’s just starting,” said Dr. Gail Schonfeld, whose East End Pediatrics practice in East Hampton has seen an average of five cases of flu each day over the past two weeks.

An 1897 ice house gets its fill of “excellent quality” frozen blocks from Down East, and Governor Dewey crowns the Potato Queen of 1947 in Riverhead.

As Long Island Collection staffers were digitizing East Hampton High School’s Bonac Beachcomber newspaper, we had some laughs over the Nov. 19, 1947, issue, which covered the junior prom.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have asked the federal Food and Drug Administration for authorization of a fourth (or second booster) dose of their respective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19. Should this be approved, how much extra protection would it provide and who would benefit?

In the last two weeks, ospreys have started to return to the East End from their wintering grounds in Central and South America. They’re a sign of spring, and a constant visual reminder that our actions directly affect birds.

Spring comes to Mrs. Payne’s yard 125 years ago, Miss Alice White has a party on Main Street for St. Patrick’s Day, 1922, and in 1972 Montauk saw a Save Our Stripers movement.

Regular customers of Fierro’s Pizza in East Hampton Village will surely have noticed by now that there are new faces behind the counter this week, and that those new faces are actually familiar ones from the pizzeria’s earlier days. Randy Kendall and Joe Page, who worked on and off at Fierro’s for decades — Mr. Kendall for some 18 years, Mr. Page for 12 or 13 — took over as its new owners on March 14.