George Watson bought a dive bar he would later call The Dock from Bob Fitzgerald in 1973 after a handshake deal over 9 a.m. shots of blackberry brandy. “It was a cinderblock building. It was kind of raw looking,” he recalled during an oral history interview late last year. “And one of the first things… Read more »
Is there anything sweeter than a community cookbook? Often compiled to raise money for a good cause, they tend to be stuffed with all manner of extra ingredients. Corny jokes, endearing illustrations, poetry, sage advice, tips for hunting, gathering, and fishing, the names of book committee volunteers and recipes from others fondly remembered, even celebrities… Read more »
Let’s take a break from our winter-themed posts. We could all use a respite from the below-freezing temperatures, incessant winds, and piles of snow still lining the sidewalks, driveways, and playgrounds. Fast forward to summer. Strap on your Mary Janes and get your favorite striped T-shirt out of storage. We’re going fishing with this young… Read more »
“When I struck the Napeague road I thought I had come to the abomination of desolation,” said Florence Sammis in 1967 of her first trip to Montauk, in 1918. Interviewed in 1976, Martha Greene remembered a similarly lonely landscape when she commuted from East Hampton in the 1930s as a secretary for the Montauk Beach… Read more »
Brrrr! Bill Gosman recently donated this icy image to the Montauk Library Archives, along with 16 others depicting activity on the harbor as far back as the 1920s but primarily in the 1940s and ‘50s. Bill is, of course, a member of the Gosman family who over several generations built a popular harborside empire… Read more »
Santa looks like such a contented fellow. The red and green color scheme, the Dalmatian pup, the fishing lures placed inexplicably on top of a drum. Fred Guardineer, the illustrator, lived in Babylon and wrote a “Fish & Game” column for The Babylon Beacon. So what does he have to do with Montauk? Fishing lines… Read more »
Every week, the Montauk Library Archives fulfills historical reference and research requests from local newspaper reporters, documentarians, podcasters, authors, and the like. You may have seen images from our archives last month in the East Hampton Star’s article “Carl Fisher’s Montauk, 100 Years Ago” or aired on a recent episode of the Smithsonian Channel’s Mysteries… Read more »
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 first annual Community Picnic and Field Day Saturday, sponsored by Montauk Youth Inc., has been termed a success,” The East Hampton Star reported on October 2, 1980. The newspaper added rather poetically that many local families had taken part despite the fields at Montauk County Park having been “windswept.” Baking and cooking contests… Read more »
In late October of 1903, a young couple joined hands in marriage atop the lighthouse tower. Their choice of the venue arose from their happenstance meeting there, when Evelyn Cook was visiting her aunt and uncle, Margaret and Captain James G. Scott, who was the lighthouse keeper living there at the time. The groom was… Read more »