125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, September 21
It is reported that six carloads of beer were unloaded at Lindenhurst, the place of the firemen’s tournament, last week. And yet the dust on tournament day was almost unbearable. Lindenhurst must be a dry village.
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An unusual sight in the heavens on Wednesday was observed by a large number of people. At noon, while the sun was the brightest, high in the heavens near the zenith could be plainly seen with the naked eye the moon and the planet Venus just below it. It is not every day that one can see a star and a crescent and the sun in a single group.
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We understand Mr. Eldredge has a contract for building a large and commodious stable for Mrs. Charles H. Adams. He has already commenced and hopes to have it completed late this fall. The main building will be 30 by 50 feet, comprising a large carriage room and stable for seven or eight horses.
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, September 18
One of the largest real estate deals made in East Hampton in many years, and one involving over $1,000,000, is reported to have been transacted last Friday, when Carl Graham Fisher, developer of Miami Beach, Florida, bought nearly 5,000 acres of Montauk lands of the Montauk Company. It is assumed that Mr. Fisher, who is at the present time engaged in real estate development at Port Washington, has bought the Montauk property for development.
The Montauk Company property is located between Fort Pond and what is known as the Third House, which gained widespread notoriety last fall when it was raided by the State Police and over $200,000 worth of liquor confiscated. It has several miles of ocean shore front, the land formation being high rolling hills, different from that found anywhere else on the eastern coast.
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Another real estate transaction involving nearly $50,000 and of great interest to the resident population of East Hampton is the reported sale of A.H. Culver’s Bath Houses and Pavilion at the bathing beach to the Sea Spray Realty Corporation, which has recently been incorporated at Albany. It is learned that a substantial deposit has been paid the owner.
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The Garden Club of East Hampton is delighted with the improvement shown in the general aspect of the dooryard gardens this year. There are more flowers and greater neatness observable everywhere, making it often difficult for the committee to arrive at a decision, but weeds in paths and flowers and on lawns were factors in turning the scales.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, September 21
Letter From Paris
A friend just back from Italy tells me of leafing through some old dog-eared editions in a second-hand bookstore. Among them was a little volume called “Speaking English” which has been the textbook for those slippery gentlemen of the Paris Black Market. I always wondered where they got their vocabularies, and now I know. — Mary Huntting Rattray
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Village Chief of Police Francis Leddy has applied to the Village Board for a year’s leave of absence, and it has been granted. Police Lieutenant Richard Steele will become Acting Chief, and Thomas Mott has been raised to Lieutenant on the village force.
Mr. Leddy, who has been on the police force here for 18 years, 14 of those years as its Chief, will leave on Monday for Washington, D.C. After two to three months’ special training, he will be with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was called on emergency draft to the F.B.I., which is recruiting law-enforcement officers from various types of service.
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Card of Thanks
To the people of East Hampton and surrounding communities I want to thank you for your patronage in my fruit and vegetable business. I’ll see you in the spring. Thank you. — Don Jackson
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, September 18
Scallops are in season, but do the scallops know it?
The harvesting of scallops in State waters opened legally Monday, but the notices were not good. In fact, Bob Eames of the East Hampton Sea Food Producers Cooperative, which has a retail outlet in Amagansett, said the yield was “very, very poor.”
And at Stuart’s Seafood, also in Amagansett, Mrs. Stuart Vorpahl yesterday said only 50 bushels had come in, in contrast to 200 bushels a day last year.
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Confronted with Supervisor Judith Hope’s July 16 recommendation that Related Housing Companies Inc. and the architectural firm of Hoberman and Wasserman be disqualified from consideration for a “senior citizens” housing project here, the Town’s planning and zoning committee decided Monday not to decide for the time being.
Related Housing is charged by Mrs. Hope with using “privileged information” imparted by a fired Town project consultant to obtain an option on one of seven sites whose identities were to have been kept secret.
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The steady advance of potatoes in the commodity futures market that began Aug. 11 and has continued long enough to set a 103-year record in the New York Mercantile Exchange doesn’t have much to do with the price of potatoes.
That’s the view of one local grower, who asked that his name not be used because of the sensitivity of the commodities market. “It’s like playing Las Vegas, pure speculation. It has kind of lost contact with potatoes,” he observed.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, September 21
The outlook for home heating oil costs this winter look like the original crude, gloppy stuff itself. Nationwide, prices are predicted to average as much as $2.28 a gallon. As East Enders know from experience, that will probably be even higher here.
“A family that had to shell out $400 two winters ago shelled out $700 last year and will have to shell out $1,400 this winter,” said Senator Charles Schumer at a news conference in Manhattan last week. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that many New Yorkers will have to make a choice between heat and food.”
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Dissonance within one of East Hampton’s venerable institutions, the Ladies Village Improvement Society, which had been discernible for some time, came to a head last week at the society’s annual meeting and election of officers.
The meeting, on Sept. 11, was attended by more than 150 members of the 400-member society. It had been planned as a dessert and coffee at the Peconic Coast restaurant in Amagansett, but was moved to the Emergency Services Building in East Hampton when it became clear that it would draw a crowd.
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Oyster farmers participating in a four-year, government-funded pilot project reported their successes to the East Hampton Town Trustees last week. Although they didn’t come right out and say it, the growers and their sponsors clearly hoped to have the trustees look more favorably upon leasing small areas of public bottomland for mariculture in the future.
“The philosophy was to create small business startups, create success stories, and have them emulated. It does work,” said Greg Rivera of Cornell Cooperative Extension, which organized the pilot farms in all East End towns using grants from state and federal agencies.
