125 Years Ago 1901
From The East Hampton Star, March 8
One of the prettiest houses in the cottage settlement is E.D. Terbell’s, which has just been enlarged and remodeled by George A. Eldredge. Its new design is strictly Colonial and it is an ornament to the locality in which it stands.
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A new post office ruling imposes a fine of $600 and a year’s imprisonment on anyone who through carelessness or otherwise takes mail from the post office not belonging to them and fails to deliver it to the owner or return it to the post office. This rule applies to newspapers as well as other mail matter. The post master is not held to blame in any case.
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Basing an estimate on the amount of money spent in East Hampton annually for the highways, the town is losing enough money each year by not adopting the money tax system to build one half mile of good hard road. Is the old labor tax system a paying thing for the town?
100 Years Ago 1926
From The East Hampton Star, March 5
Rumors have been afloat for months about a seventy-five acre development between here and Amagansett, to be handled by a group of our summer residents, but nothing definite was made public until this week, when E.E. Bartlett, of New York and Amagansett, and William Lawrence Bottomley, one of America’s foremost architects, spent a few days here going over landscape gardening plans for the piece.
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“This is beautiful!” exclaimed President McKinley, when General Wheeler, from the top of headquarters hill, showed him the thousands of tents that speckled the grassy slopes of Montauk Point, jutting out into the blue sea beyond. Speaking as a soldier, the commander in chief added a little later: “I have never seen a finer camp.”
In looking over an article in Munsey’s of November 1898, entitled “Life at Camp Wikoff,” by Edwin Emerson, Jr., it was hard for the Star to believe that it was President McKinley in 1898, and not Carl G. Fisher in 1925, who made the remark.
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One of the liveliest meetings the Lions Club of East Hampton has ever held was that of Wednesday evening, at the Maidstone Arms. President Ralph C. Frood, who also acted as host, was complimented time and time again for the wonderful supper served to the twenty-five members at 6:30 o’clock.
After supper the officers and members adjourned to a private room and took up several serious matters that vitally effect East Hampton as a summer resort.
75 Years Ago 1951
From The East Hampton Star, March 8
The annual report of the Amagansett Village Improvement Society recently sent out to all members states that the trees along Main Street from Indian Wells Highway to Atlantic Avenue have been pruned, treated and fed with 6,000 pounds of tree food and that no trace of Dutch Elm disease was found. Thirty-two trees have been planted on Main Street, Hedges Lane and Devon Road.
The privet hedge around the cemetery has been removed, which contributes both to the beauty and safety of the corner of Main Street and Atlantic Avenue.
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Indignant over what was interpreted as the latest maneuver to “divide and conquer” through the circulation of a letter in behalf of disputed Suffolk County Leader W. Kingsland Macy over the signature of Charles H. Duryea of Islip, Supervisors Chairman, now ill in Florida, which his brother, State Conservation Commissioner Perry B. Duryea, has declared never could have been written by him, rank and file members of the Suffolk County Republican organization have formed a committee to lead a fight to the end to remove Macy as county chairman.
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The Guild Hall theater was filled, on Sunday afternoon, for a notable recital given by Jan Gorbaty, Polish pianist and graduate of the Warsaw Conservatory who is now living in New York and teaching at the Chatham Square Music School and the Music School Settlement. He played and taught in Vienna, and it was there that he met Americans who suggested his coming to this country; he has only been in New York for two years, with his wife and baby. He was brought to East Hampton through Southampton friends, and plans to spend some time here this summer.
50 Years Ago 1976
From The East Hampton Star, March 4
An industrial poison emitted by two General Electric factories has so contaminated the Hudson River that the State Department of Environmental Conservation last week banned commercial fishing for striped bass and most other species there. Stripers sampled from the Hudson were found to contain an average of 18 parts per million of General Electric’s polychlorinated biphenyls, familiarly known as PCBs. The maximum concentration that the Federal Food and Drug Administration deems safe for human consumption is five per million.
Bass spawned in the Hudson do not for the most part stay there, but join in migrations along the Atlantic coast and return upriver several years later to spawn in their turn. Once a fish has become contaminated by PCBs, which can happen in 20 to 30 days, it stays contaminated; like DDT, PCBs accumulate in fatty tissue and remain indefinitely.
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Montauk Youth Inc. held a “Happy Days” dance Friday evening, and about 50 youngsters were on hand. Ray Walecko and Karen Hayduk were presented the award for best dancers, Glen Webb received the “shades” award, Brad Dickinson and John Capozzola took first place for the “Fonzie and Spike” award, and John Tagliavia won the prize for the most consistent “1950s dress” award.
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Carlo Grossman has just returned from the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, La., where he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Oreck of Amagansett. Mrs. Oreck recently opened the Sandra Zahn Oreck Gallery in New Orleans and Mr. Oreck has moved his vacuum manufacturing company there.
25 Years Ago 2001
From The East Hampton Star, March 8
The March Lion, as the National Weather Service dubbed this week’s snowstorm, promised more than it delivered. Nevertheless, National Weather Service forecasters continued to insist yesterday that the northeaster “could’ve been” the Perfect Blizzard, “the biggest storm of its kind in history,” in the words of one meteorologist.
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With starter houses routinely fetching well over $200,000, just about everyone in East Hampton Town seems to agree that there is a serious shortage of affordable housing here.
In the wake of intense opposition from neighbors to the town’s plan to develop the 52-lot Green Hollow Woods affordable housing subdivision, one contractor, Paul Forsberg of Springs, thinks he may have an alternative.
Mr. Forsberg wants the town to let builders target small lots in old filed map subdivisions that are scattered throughout the town for what he prefers to call “entry level” housing that can be marketed to young teachers, police officers, and other permanent residents.
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Anticipating that by 2010 the volume of cars and trucks in East Hampton Village’s commercial core will increase by at least 25 percent, a traffic engineer has recommended installing two new traffic signals on Newtown Lane and resetting the village’s five existing lights so that they are synchronized.
