A friend wrote recently to ask if there were ghosts at the Montauk Manor. About 20 years ago, he said, his sister and her husband stayed in a room on one of the upper floors — perhaps one built into the roof level, as she remembered a sloped ceiling – in the massive, four-story landmark…. Read more »
The shore at Fort Pond Bay is often so sleepy it can be difficult to imagine how awake it’s been historically. Thousands of veterans of the Spanish-American War – Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” – disembarked from transport ships in Fort Pond Bay in 1898 to quarantine and recuperate at Camp Wikoff, whose entire infrastructure had… Read more »
Gone but (maybe) not forgotten: Slater Drugs, the New York Ocean Science Laboratory, the Dolphin, Bill’s Greenhouse, First National Bank, the Ronjo, the Texaco station, and $50 fines in East Hampton Town. Still kicking (at least so far): the New York State parks, Gosman’s Dock, Uihlein’s, the Viking, White’s, the IGA, John’s Pancake House, Shagwong,… Read more »
Much as they like to talk about real estate, most people in Montauk these days wouldn’t be referencing a 750-or-more-square-foot house with no AC or winter insulation on a 7,500-square-foot piece of property. The product of a late 1950s collaboration, the 200 or so prefab summer residences were designed by Andrew Geller and Raymond Loewy… Read more »
Mary and Robert Gosman started Gosman’s as a small chowder stand in 1943, originally serving fishermen. By 1975 it had grown into a sprawling, highly popular seafood destination serving tourists and employing hundreds of locals and seasonal immigrants. Several generations of the Gosman family worked (and continue to work) beside and directly above hired staff…. Read more »
What fishermen know as Great Eastern Rock off Montauk Point was named for a massive iron ocean liner that struck it on August 27, 1862. The “Great” in Great Eastern was no joke. The transatlantic British steamship measured 693 feet long by 120 feet wide and was designed to carry 4,000 passengers. Also known as… Read more »
Who doesn’t love that first glimpse of blue ocean as you enter Montauk where the old and new highways meet? Billboards like those in this photograph no longer welcome motorists, having been banished in the 1970s. But utility poles have been another story, growing in number and lingering and looming across the landscape. Thanks to… Read more »
The Montauk Village Association’s Greenery Scenery gala was THE happening of the summer from the 1970s until the ‘90s. At its peak the party attracted about 1,000 guests drinking cocktails built by Dick Cavett, Edward Albee, Maureen Stapleton, Jimmy Dean, Elia Kazan, Lauren Bacall, Craig Claiborne, Balcomb Greene, and other celebrities. The venue changed over… Read more »
Frank Mundus came to be known as Monster Man for his role in the 1950s and ‘60s as a pioneer of “monster fishing” — hunting sharks weighing as much as a ton, or more, like African game. The degree of skill, showmanship, and violence that this involved is said to have inspired the character Quint… Read more »
In the summer of 1924 at about this time, Robert Moses set out to appropriate 1,700 acres of private land to create a state park at Hither Hills. Moses was head of the Long Island State Park Commission, whose negotiations with the properties’ owners had come unraveled. One landowner was Carl Fisher, who wanted $300… Read more »