Children gather to decorate the windows of Tony’s Sport Shop leading up to Halloween in 1976 in this photograph from The East Hampton Star’s archive. Anthony (Tony) Cangiolosi (1926-2012) owned the sporting goods store, which stood at 21 Newtown Lane and sold a variety of goods, “from baseballs to fishing equipment.”
Cangiolosi served with the Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War II, after which he returned home to East Hampton to finish high school. He married Molly Welker, a gym teacher here, and trained as a carpenter. In 1966, he opened his sporting goods store. It closed in 1980.
Tony’s Sport Shop was a welcoming place where middle school students would spend free time and lunch breaks socializing. Cangiolosi was known for his sense of humor and outgoing personality.
Junior Scout Troop 649 painted these ghost silhouettes on the front window of Cangiolosi’s shop to encourage a playfully spooky mood, as part of the troop’s “pre-Halloween” decorating program downtown. Two years before, in 1974, the troop also decorated a Christmas tree downtown that won the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce’s “most eye-catching” award.
Children would decorate storefronts around East Hampton’s central business district intermittently over the years. Groups like the Girl Scouts and local students often created the decorations.
Halloween festivities in East Hampton between 1960 and 1980 included parades, costume parties, and an annual block party hosted by the East Hampton Village Police Benevolent Association in the Reutershan Parking Lot. These were organized with the intention of reducing the number of youth involved in criminal pranks, and the block parties sometimes featured bands from up the Island.
Those looking for something to do here this Halloween might consider registering on Eventbrite for the East Hampton Library’s Haunted Library or its kid-friendly Haunted Halloween Carnival.
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Moriah Moore is a librarian and archivist in the Long Island Collection at the East Hampton Library.
