Villages

Construction of the new aquatic and cultural spaces at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center is slated to be done by the end of June, according to Sarah Iudicone, president of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation. The date for the public opening, however, is still up in the air.

It was a foggy day but a cheery one as the Montauk Friends of Erin's 63rd St. Patrick's Day Parade marked the unofficial start of the season on Sunday.

In 1950, farmers on the East End could take advantage of a new weather information service. In 1975, Sag Harbor Village officials got ribbed over their salaries. And, as always, much more.

The Nature Conservancy conducted two controlled burns this week at the Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island, one on Sunday and a second on Thursday, the first to be conducted there since 2011.

Durell Godfrey, The East Hampton Star’s longtime staff photographer and a fixture at community events from Montauk to Southampton, has once again been named one of New York State’s top photographers. At the New York Press Association’s annual conference last week in Saratoga Springs, The Star’s newsletter also repeated in winning first place in the Best Newsletter category, capping a successful awards season for the paper. 

The Montauk Friends of Erin might make it look like it’s all fun and games when they step off from the Montauk Firehouse at noon Sunday for the 63rd annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, but it takes the hard work of legions of volunteers to pull it off. 

It’s not clear when, or if, President Trump’s European alcohol tariff will ever go live. Nonetheless, the threat is looming over South Fork wine and liquor retailers, who have been forced to react to the uncertainty. 

From tales of underwater archaeology off Montauk to a $2.5 million drug bust at the Tanger Outlet, it happened here.

For the first Am O'Gansett Parade in 2009, the organizers jokingly promised Clydesdales, Macy's balloons, and floats. With good humor and an enthusiastic response from the community, the very short parade has been an annual event ever since.

Birds are in trouble everywhere, but it turns out our birds here on the East End are in even worse shape than most. On our beaches, shorebirds have lost 33 percent of their population since 1970, and in our trees, songbirds continue to experience significant population declines, losing 27 percent in the same period, according to the 2025 State of the Birds report from the North American Bird Conservation Initiative.

On Saturday, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., it’s Earth Hour, a time to save energy and cut down on light pollution.

This photograph from The East Hampton Star’s archive showing Elizabeth H. Dayton Cartwright (1851-1945) adorned with flowers and surrounded by white lilies, irises, and carnations evokes the eagerness many feel for the beginning of spring.

The Sag Harbor Cinema’s “Projections” series, the mission of which is to support the work of nonprofit organizations here, returns on Sunday from 4 to 5 p.m. to highlight the recent efforts of Hamptons Community Outreach.

In 1950, Plum Island was on the auction block. In 1975, East End fishermen were worried enough about their fishing grounds to head to Washington, D.C. And much more from our past coverage.

Bruce and Jane Collins, both 95 years old, will celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary on March 14. 

It’s all about the light, they say. From Thomas Moran to Jackson Pollock, countless creatives have called the East End home. Included in that number is Sheila Eaton Isham (1924-2024), a globe-trotting painter, poet, and printmaker. 

From a Peconic River befouled by sewage 100 years ago to a sedan’s telltale sagging springs that led to a burglary arrest, it happened here.

Edward Francis White and Breanna Dawn Halbur of Arvada, Colo., were married on Sunday afternoon on the steps of the Denver City and County Building overlooking Civic Center Park, with the Hon. Renee A. Goble officiating.

What is most significant about this 1787 deed is the grouping of human lives — enslaved people — with real estate.

The good old days? How about 1975, when Sag Harbor was “the last village on Long Island to still discharge raw human wastes into its surrounding waters.” And much more from our past pungent pages.

Growing up with a father well known for documenting the vanishing wildlife of the African continent, it may have been inevitable that Zara Beard would eventually make it her mission to rescue wildlife and protect the natural world. EchoWild, the conservation nonprofit she founded this year, will start locally, with a wildlife trauma unit in East Hampton in partnership with the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center.

Community members, elected officials, and clergy gathered at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Feb. 19 for a conversation with Minerva Perez, executive director of Organizacion Latino-America (OLA) of Eastern Long Island, on how to approach changing federal immigration policy.

Henry Haney (1930-2019), a familiar face to many East Hampton residents and a valuable volunteer here, was captured in this photo by Morgan McGivern with his wife, Louise Hughes Haney, sometime in the 1990s.

Fifty years ago, problems bubbled up at the Bridgehampton School, then 80-percent Black, while East Hampton Village said no thank you to an incoming McDonald’s.

The Candy Kitchen opened in Bridgehampton on May 2, 1925. Thus, the year 2025 marks a whole century in business for the restaurant, bought by the Stavropoulos family in the 1940s and owned since 1981 by Gus Laggis. Today it is managed by his two daughters and son-in-law.

For Eagle Boat 17, thick Atlantic fog off East Hampton spelled disaster on May 19, 1922, as it was en route from the naval base at Norfolk, Va., to New London, Conn.

The nonprofit advocacy group led a workshop for tenants at the East Hampton Village manufactured home community on Oakview Highway this week so residents can advocate for themselves "to make sure it’s healthier, safer, that you’re able to be in a place that has good roads, regular electric, heat, septic, water,” Minerva Perez, OLA’s executive director, said.

Long before the name “Rowdy Hall” was adopted by a popular East Hampton Village bar and eatery (now in Amagansett), it was a boarding house: Mrs. Harry Hamlin’s Rowdy Hall. The building, now a single-family house, still stands at 111 Egypt Lane, although currently it’s floating, suspended six feet above a hole. When it’s lowered again, it will be on a new foundation.

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, East Hampton’s status as the next “Newport of Long Island” was top of mind in a competitive Southampton. At issue? Installing a single crosswalk.

Reports of electrical outages from Montauk to Wainscott, and all the way up through Shelter Island and the North Fork, rolled in on Thursday beginning shortly after 10 a.m.