125 Years Ago 1897
From The East Hampton Star, December 17
Graphophones and phonographs are all the rage in town now. W.F. Muchmore has been running one for a month and recently machines have been put into the stores of Van Scoy, Dayton & Stratton and S.A. Gregory & Co. Grand concerts are given every afternoon and evening at each of these stores. Who says this is a slow town?
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Eight of the maples placed by the Village Improvement society at the south side of the railroad embankment at the north end of the street have been maliciously girdled, the places where the bark has been removed being adroitly covered with mud.
This is the second act of the kind lately perpetuated in our village, though it is quite unlikely that both deeds were done by the same person. Although no reward is offered, should the culprit fall into the eighty hands of the forty members of the society they would guarantee him his just reward.
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A special meeting of the Ladies’ Village Improvement society will be held tomorrow evening, at which the report of the committee on street lamps will be given and the question of lighting the street will be put to a final vote.
The committee informs us that a great many, in fact the majority of the property owners along the street and on Newtown lane who have been approached have promised to give a lamp, and that the majority of the people seem to be in favor of the plan.
100 Years Ago 1922
From The East Hampton Star, December 15
The large barn owned by John Edwards, on Main street, Amagansett, was entirely destroyed by a fire started by a six-year-old youth Monday noon. A few years ago Mr. Edwards bought the property, using the barns and other buildings in his farming operations, and rented the residence.
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Over a hundred hunters from East Hampton and neighboring communities witnessed a most interesting moving picture shown at Edwards’ Theatre Tuesday evening, under the direction of the East Hampton Gun Club and through the courtesy of LeRoy Edwards, vice president of the club.
At the organization meeting held last week it was thought by many that if the Field and Stream hunting and fishing reels could be procured and shown locally, enthusiasm and interest in this new organization could be created. Their surmises were correct. Although the entertainment was little advertised, a representative gathering of sportsmen was on hand.
75 Years Ago 1947
From The East Hampton Star, December 18
Several people in this vicinity enjoyed an unusual dish, porpoise steak, early this week. Philip Collins was exercising dogs on the shore of Northwest Creek, on Wednesday evening of last week, when he saw two porpoises stranded in shallow water there, chilled and unable to find their way out. They must have gone in, in search of food, and the tide went down. Mr. Collins killed them; they weighed around 300 pounds each.
Steaks cut from them proved to be very tender, tasting very much like beef and not at all fishy. Everyone who tried the meat liked it.
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“A Christmas Carol” will be presented at Guild Hall, Monday evening, December 22, at 9:00 o’clock and Tuesday evening, December 23, at 7:30, by the Guild Hall Players.
More than fifty Guild Hall Players are participating in bringing Charles Dickens’ immortal favorite to East Hampton, for the benefit of the building repair fund for Guild Hall. All people, both young and old will be delighted with Frank Dayton’s characterization of Ebenezer Scrooge.
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Like Virginia, who wrote to The New York Sun fifty years ago asking: “Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?” a good many of us have questioned, at one time or another, the existence of that happy spirit. We need to be reminded of the reply given little Virginia by Francis P. Church, in an unsigned editorial which has become a part of American Christmas folklore:
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”
50 Years Ago 1972
From The East Hampton Star, December 14
The governed should become more informed, their governors should become more responsive, and the “adversary” approach, on both sides, should yield to cooperation in solving the problems of “Our Town,” it was generally agreed at a somewhat historic meeting of the twain last Sunday afternoon.
What made the meeting, at Ashawagh Hall, Springs, a “first” was the fact that it brought together representatives from almost every organization in East Hampton Town to discuss, rather than debate, environmental problems deemed of concern to all.
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The East Hampton Town Trustees held their last public meeting of the year in Town Hall Tuesday night. The small, friendly audience found that body, heels firmly dug in, determined to check whatever wrongs have been and might be wrought upon the Town’s bottomlands entrusted to them by the people of East Hampton.
At this meeting they pledged to take every possible action against infractions brought upon the Town waters by the Army Corps of Engineers in the issuance of permits that were, in the Trustees’ opinion, against the best interests of the people of the Town.
25 Years Ago 1997
From The East Hampton Star, December 18
The main spotlight in Harry Macklowe’s domain this week shined on Madison Avenue, part of which was closed for the second time during the Christmas rush because of bricks rumbling off a $35 million, 39-story building the Manhattan real estate magnate owns between 54th and 55th Streets.
Meanwhile, his ongoing battles with Martha Stewart, an East Hampton neighbor on Georgica Close Road, took a dramatic turn on Friday, when Mr. Macklowe filed a suit in Suffolk County Court alleging that various village officials, including Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., have conspired in an “all-out vendetta” against him.
The village’s special prosecutor, Daniel G. Rodgers of Riverhead, called the allegations “simply not true. There’s no basis in fact for what they’re stating.”
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Down Hook, the area in the heart of East Hampton Village that includes the North End Cemetery and Memorial Green, will be darker than usual this winter. Neither the sails of Hook Mill nor the Christmas lights that illuminate them for the holidays will be in view, and the sails, which were taken down last week, may not be replaced until spring.
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Had the Ross School known then what it knows now about its future, it may not have chosen to establish itself in cramped quarters in the middle of an industrial park.
But the private school, which is in the midst of a substantial expansion, has no plans to leave its home at East Hampton’s Goodfriend Park.
In fact, the school has site plans pending before the East Hampton Town Planning Board that will transform as many as seven of Goodfriend Park’s 20 commercial-industrial lots into a spacious new campus, complete with a high school, middle school, and grade school, two parking lots and possibly a gymnasium and playing field.
