Most of the historic audio materials in the Montauk Library’s archives consist of recordings of oral history interviews, lectures, and local community organization meetings captured on cassette. But hidden among the stacks was a copy of Old Montauk: The Song for People Who Love It on vinyl record. Old Montauk is a country-inspired ballad performed… Read more »
Barbara Metzger (1944-2023) was an award-winning novelist, editor, writer of greeting card verses, artist, and longtime volunteer with the Friends of the Montauk Library. It was in that last capacity that Bob-E, as she was known, was instrumental in organizing book fairs on the Montauk Green on July Fourth weekends from 1980 to 2014. In… Read more »
A 74-gun British warship, the H.M.S. Culloden ran aground at the northeast corner of Fort Pond Bay during a winter storm in 1781. At the time Long Island was occupied by British forces, and the Culloden had been patrolling Block Island Sound in search of French ships providing aid to Rhode Island colonists. The Culloden was… Read more »
The first known aerial photograph was taken over Paris by Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, a French photographer and balloonist, in 1858. Tournachon used a wet plate collodion process that required the photographic material to be prepared, exposed, and developed from a portable darkroom while aloft in a basket suspended from a gas balloon. From the 1880s to… Read more »
The Montauk Air Force Station operated from 1951 to 1981. Previously, the property had been used as a World War II coastal defense station disguised as a coastal fishing village. Subsequently, most was absorbed into Camp Hero State Park or used by the town for affordable housing. Originally from Pennsylvania, Ed Crasky had served as… Read more »
We’re trying something different for this week’s Throwback Thursday — sharing a photograph from our archives that we don’t know much about and asking for your help in identifying or recollecting the people, places, and stories behind the image. What we do know is that this photograph is of a Montauk Community Church variety/talent show,… Read more »
Since 1796, the Montauk Point Lighthouse has served as a navigational aid to mariners, casting light from the land’s end and acting as a signal for the rocky shoreline. In its early years of operation, a lighthouse keeper attended to the whale oil-fueled lanterns, carrying eight lanterns up the interior spiral staircase and lighting the… Read more »
Who lived in Montauk in 1930? The U.S. Census of that year shines light not only on who lived here but also what they did and where they came from. Tuthill, Grimes, Joyce, McDonald, Syvertsen, Paon, Pfund, Duryea, Burke, Martell, Pitts, Tuma, Gilmartin, Briand – many last names reverberate locally almost 100 years later. A… Read more »
“Mrs. Gunnar Strandberg, whose husband was employed at the Willard restaurant, was helping him put boards over the restaurant windows when the storm struck. Unable to get back to her house in the village until the hurricane abated, she was greatly concerned for the safety of her two-year-old infant, who was alone there.” “As soon… Read more »
Given the price of land today, a waterfront building is more likely to be replaced with something grander than moved from one spot to another. Back in the day, though, homes and even restaurants (like Trail’s End) in the old fishing village on Fort Pond Bay were moved to other places like Shepherd’s Neck and… Read more »