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 »
For over a century, the East End of Long Island has drawn artists from New York City and beyond, inspired by the raw natural beauty of its shorelines, forests, grasslands, glacial moraines, and built structures like saltboxes, windmills, and the Montauk Point lighthouse. In 1940, Victor and Mabel D’Amico, an artist and educator couple from… 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 »
Below, a three-piece band on the Lakeside stage, 1950s. | Dave Edwardes Collection, Montauk Library Archives And so, just like that … the summer season is off to a start. As one could have expected … all roads, all invitations, all Instagrams lead to Montauk … And more specifically, The Surf Lodge. All of social note… Read more »
Back in the day, the proprietors of East Hampton made a living not so much by planting crops as by sending livestock to graze on 800 acres of pasture in Montauk. Renting the land together and co-managing the cattle, sheep, and horses, they also built three houses: one at what is now Hither Hills,… Read more »
Top photo, Bob-E Metzger, chairwoman of the Friends’ Book Fair at the time, looking over boxes in the storage area maintained by the organization, circa 1990s. Below, clockwise from left, Bob-E shelving books moved from the small house across the street into the present, now-renovated library building in the early 1990s; Suzanne Gosman and Bob-E… Read more »