Item of the Week
From the East Hampton Library
Long Island Collection
This photograph, which was lent to the Long Island Collection for digitization, shows David J. Gardiner’s livestock in front of his barns. Gardiner (1840-1924) sold his proprietorship of Gardiner’s Island to his brother, John Lion Gardiner, and lived in the Gardiner Brown House, at 95 Main Street in East Hampton Village, with these barns on the property.
David’s land holdings were among the most extensive in East Hampton, his property stretching from Main Street back to the railroad station. He operated several businesses, including the East Hampton Lumber & Coal Company, and he maintained a strong interest in farming and horse breeding.
Gardiner’s buffaloes were a local novelty. Some of his herd came back from the West with him, and some were given to him in March of 1893 by Austin Corbin (1827-1896), robber baron and president of the Long Island Rail Road, from Corbin’s game preserve in New Hampshire. Gardiner tried to mate the buffaloes with local cattle, producing a mule-like breed called a cattalo. Gardiner’s buffalo experiment ended in 1904, with his remaining cattaloes donated to the Bronx Zoo.
After David Gardiner died in 1924, his nephew Winthrop Gardiner Sr. (1887-1970) inherited the Gardiner Brown House and undertook important renovations to the property, which mainly relied on well water, with minimal heating. Winthrop Gardiner moved the house significantly back from the street as part of his renovations.
In 1928, at least one of the barns from the property was moved down Main Street and Newtown Lane to 4 Fresno Place, where it still stands. At this site, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps show that the property was owned by the Barns family between 1929 and 1957 and used for their masonry business.
In 1962, Bruce Collins bought the property from Robert S. Barns, a builder, in the interest of expanding operation space for his family’s oil business, Collins Fuel Inc. The barns and the property where they stand on Fresno Place are now for sale.
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Andrea Meyer, a librarian and archivist, is head of collection for the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
