“Ms. Crasky’s long life was chronicled in the pages of The Star,” the East Hampton weekly noted in its obituary for Josephine Crasky after her death, at age 101, in April of this year. The obituary listed a number of examples: “an announcement of the Amagansett School’s 1939 commencement exercises, a 1942 note about… Read more »
A large billboard reading “Welcome to Montauk, America’s Outstanding Summer Resort,” greeted tourists as they arrived for the summer of 1947. The Montauk Surf Club and Pool parking lot was full of coupes and station wagons that delivered travelers to the seaside retreat. Guests loafed around in the public pool, while others enjoyed the cabanas… Read more »
The contemplative young woman in this postcard turns out to be Diane Duca Delprete, now 78 and living in New Jersey. She was about 13 or 14 when the photograph was taken in the 1950s, one of three decades when her family would spend two weeks each summer camping at Hither Hills State Park…. Read more »
Imagine driving up a meandering dirt driveway lined with ornamental trees, a horse-riding track on your left, a watchtower home to a fancier of pigeons on your right, greenhouses stocked with tropical plants, and a private zoo replete with gazelles and peacocks, all surrounding a Spanish-Moor-styled estate. Does this sound like Montauk? While contemporary estates… Read more »
It’s that time of year when we write a post about the Montauk St. Patrick’s Day Parade, sharing some aspect of its founding or the history of its organizers–the Montauk Friends of Erin. Last year we posted a cartoon by Frank Borth depicting a colorful parade of marchers, floats, and balloons rounding the plaza. The… Read more »
Leisuramas were small, cookie-cutter vacation homes built in the Culloden Shores subdivision of Montauk in the early 1960s. They were designed to be affordable and came conveniently pre-furnished from top to bottom. “All you need is a key and a six-pack,” Frank Tuma, who managed their construction, was rumored to have said. The marketing of… Read more »
In Carl Fisher’s mind, apparently, there was nothing an Aerocar couldn’t do. Designed by Glenn Curtiss using lightweight materials and applying aerodynamic principles, the trailer could be hooked to a Hudson Light Runabout to create a land yacht for cruising America’s virgin highways. Fisher hoped to drum up interest in manufacturing several classes of… Read more »
It was a misty morning on January 16, 1894, when “Fannie J. Bartlett,” a three-masted schooner transporting coal from Philadelphia to Boston, ran onto an outer bar just two miles east of the Napeague Life-saving Station. Captain A. T. Hutchins was following a pilot boat when he lost his bearings in the fog at 4… Read more »
A nasty horse named Humpty Dumpty gets a kick out of throwing riders. A bathtub morphs into a UFO and lifts off. A little girl wins a baby elephant in a mail-in coupon contest. A surfcaster hooks a mermaid off Montauk Point. The imagination of the illustrator Frank Borth extended all the way from drawing… Read more »
Ever wonder how you can learn more about the history of Montauk? Reading our weekly Throwback Thursday posts is a great starting point and if you want to dig deeper into a topic or have local history-related questions you can visit the Montauk Library’s archives. But what is an archives anyway? “An archives is a… Read more »