Tens of thousands of veterans were sent to Montauk late in the summer of 1898 to quarantine and recover from tropical diseases before fully returning home from the Spanish American War. Montauk was remote, its sea breezes were restorative, and the troops had been “so weakened and shattered as to be ripe for dying like… 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 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 »
Did that gentle little boy grow up to be a veterinarian? Did that earnest little girl go on to become a broadcast journalist? We don’t know, but in all likelihood some of the children in these photos – taken by Peggy Joyce in, we believe, the early 1960s, today are the grandparents of Montauk School… 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 »
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 »