Villages

In this Star photo by Eileen Bock we see a helicopter grounded below the Montauk Manor on the Montauk Playhouse lawn, as someone from ABC News hoped to catch Perry Duryea Jr. at the polls in his native hamlet.

After 34 years in business — all of them on East Hampton's Park Place — the Party Shoppe will close its doors at the end of February when its owner, Theo Landi, retires.

A Prohibition-era rumrunning arrest, the death of an important pet fish, election results from another era, and more in this week's look back at the East Hampton Star archive.

Michael Clark, the executive director of LTV Studios, was honored with a Recognition Award at a Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee meeting on Saturday after being invited as a guest speaker.

On Tuesday evening in Sag Harbor, people were busy casting ballots at the firehouse on Brick Kiln Road. The fire trucks themselves were seen and heard on Main Street during a victory parade for the Pierson-Bridgehampton field hockey team, which had just won the class C county championship game. And a small group of worshipers gathered at Christ Church to pray and meditate together, navigating their Election Day anxieties in the comfort of interfaith spiritual discourse and uplifting music.

First came news that Bridgehampton's Kmart, the former retail giant's last full-sized location in the continental United States, was closing. On Monday, the now-empty big-box store's future came into clearer focus: Yes, Target is coming to Bridgehampton.

On Thursday night, a group of fiber artists organized by Erica Huberty, Louise Eastman, and Laurie Lambrecht put up 35 handmade, nonpartisan signs across Sag Harbor Village, all containing a single-word message: "Vote." Village workers promptly took them all down on Friday morning, relegating them to garbage before the artists dug through the trash to save them.

East Hampton Village closed off Newtown Lane starting at 5 p.m. on Saturday — three hours before the first pitch of Game 2 — so the community could come together, with Montauk Brewing Company beverages in hand, and watch the Yankees in the World Series. 

“What is a new land ethic?” Stephan Van Dam, the president of ChangeHampton, asked rhetorically. The idea, he said, is “to disrupt our relationship with the natural world and overcome and change our attitude towards nature — the idea that we need to dominate nature. We need to disrupt that.” 

B. Vintage, run by Linda Buckley and Cristina Buckley, a Springs mother-daughter team, is set to open tomorrow at 79 Main Street in East Hampton. It is the first business in the Anchor Society’s Winter Shops program, an off-season initiative that aims to fill otherwise empty storefronts.

“We are here to talk to the air and hope something talks back,” said James Saccone of Smithtown, the tech manager of the Long Island Paranormal Investigators, while walking through the blacked-out halls of the Nathaniel Rogers House as a group of ghost hunters attempted to bridge the gap between the physical world and what lies beyond. 

This haunting photograph shows the gravestone of Mercy Edwards Van Scoy (1732-1782) in the Van Scoy-Edwards Cemetery in Northwest Woods. Self-guided tours are available from the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society.

Instead of tossing those old jack-o'-lanterns in the garbage, the South Fork chapter of ReWild Long Island is asking people to compost their old Halloween pumpkins and gourds, and has partnered with three South Fork farms and gardens to make that easy.

Pity Tom Banks, his head stove in by a horse hoof. That was 1899. Fifty years later, two pilots were forced to make daring emergency landings, one on Long Beach and another at the Shinnecock Canal. Do read on.

Shoppers who came to Bridgehampton from near and far on Sunday to mark the closing of the retail giant’s last full-size store celebrated and mourned, recalling affordable clothing, first jobs, and a different era.

The namesake for this recipe was likely Mary Hedges Carll (1831-1900), the aunt of the East Hampton Library’s first librarian, Ettie Hedges Pennypacker.

This week, as Kmart shutters in Bridgehampton, you can read about its grand opening 25 years ago. And much more of interest and semi-interest from our past pages.

Residents of La Forest Lane, citing traffic and a serious summertime accident involving two e-bikes, urged the East Hampton Village Board last winter to consider turning their two-way road into a one-way street. The board then commissioned a traffic study, the results of which were presented on Friday.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. will moderate a ChangeHampton discussion Sunday on “between property owners and landscape designers, contractors and entrepreneurs” who are using “restorative landscaping, rewilding, and pursuing nature-based solutions to counteract the climate and biodiversity crises.” 

Margot Pena and Douglas Steigerwald’s recent wedding is proof that true love comes when you least expect it. Married last month at Clearwater Beach in Springs overlooking Gardiner’s Bay, the soulmates found each other late in life.

The Rev. Benjamin Shambaugh will be back in the pulpit at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church this week after returning from a 10-day stint as chaplain aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Vigorous as it traveled from Panama to Virginia, part of an effort by the Coast Guard to help personnel reintegrate smoothly at home.

Tom Piacentine was walking to the beach in Amagansett 40 years ago when he stumbled upon what looked like a ball buried in the sand. Though he didn’t yet know it, what he had found was a seemingly authentic World War II-era German steel helmet.

This month the Montauk Library has three giant boxes at its front entrance to collect donations for the Montauk Food Pantry, the Retreat, and ARF.

To promote Montauk as a summer resort, Carl Fisher published this booklet with the Montauk Beach Development Corporation, detailing the amenities of the Montauk Manor hotel and the charms of the surroundings.

On the East End, we hear a lot about invasive species in the plant world, but the house sparrow was one of the original invasive species. House sparrows are bullies. They fight over dirt baths. They are nonmigratory, colonize habitat, and then profusely breed. When native migratory birds return to nest in the spring, these pugnacious birds force them away. 

As Loretta Davis prepares to leave the Retreat, the domestic violence shelter has announced Cate Carbonaro as her replacement.

The news. It just never stops. Herewith, a peek at what was happening as far back as 1899, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood weekly.

If weather forecasts are to be trusted, the next few nights will be clear, making the brightest comet of the year visible due west, shortly after sunset. The comet is in an Oort cloud on an 80,000-year orbit of the sun. 

People across the South Fork, and indeed much of the northern part of the United States, were treated to a vivid display of the aurora borealis on Thursday night, prompting many to look out their windows, pull over their cars, post pictures on Instagram, and wonder: Why? Next question: Will they be visible again Friday night?

Time was a breeze on land likely meant the three windmills in East Hampton Village were churning grain. They’re still there, reminders of a time when we were more positively connected to the environment. All three will be open to the public on Saturday, for what Hugh King, the village historian, is calling Windmill Day, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.