At the time of its creation in 1958, the Sea and Sky Portel was a new and unique concept in resort enjoyment, welcoming aviators and mariners by way of its adjoining airfield and marina. The luxury motel featured apartment-style accommodations with a neighboring restaurant and cocktail lounge located on the eastern shore of Lake Montauk…. Read more »
After Ruth Woodrow died in 1983, Bessi Hochstein wrote a letter to the East Hampton Star describing her memories of boarding at Mrs. Woodrow’s cabins in Shepherd’s Neck. “The first time I was in Montauk was early spring, 1979, the year before I entered college,” she wrote, “I came, like hordes of others my… Read more »
Either the people on this dock are going home pitifully empty-handed after a fishing trip, or else they have just landed in Montauk on a ferry after visiting New York or New London. We think it’s the latter, and that the era could be the 1920s, when the Montauk Steamboat Company and then its successor,… Read more »
In an oral history interview in 2005, Stuart Vorpahl reminisced about Montauk’s historic fishing village on Fort Pond Bay, its former open grasslands, the travails of fishermen in severe storms, the heartbreaking “Pelican” disaster, and how World War II transformed the lives of many residents. Stuart, who died in 2016 at 76, was too young… Read more »
What do all these photos have in common? A couple of hints. Think of one’s dismay at seeing a receiver dangling uselessly inside – a pretty sure sign of malfunction. Or think of one filling with rising water while Agents 86 and 99 struggle desperately to get out. The phone… Read more »
On the corner of Main Street and Carl Fisher Plaza, White’s Pharmacy was a magnet for Montauk kids in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. For starters, it had a soda fountain and a great view of any action that was going down in town. “What the liquor store is now was Dick White’s drug store,”… Read more »
“WHY, here is all the charm of England and Scotland, and less than three hours from New York!” The noted visitor, a traveler to many climes, stood high on a breeze-swept, green-clad hill at Montauk Beach, 125 miles out into the cool Atlantic on Long Island’s slender tip, and surveyed the alluring panorama before him…. Read more »
Montauk’s first Blessing of the Fleet – born as the “Blessing of the Boats” – was in 1956 and the brainchild of Vinnie Grimes, a charter boat captain and Navy veteran who’d seen Portuguese tuna fishermen blessing their boats before they headed out to sea on the West Coast. “It is an old European custom… Read more »
Dear Carl, Just a card showing you what sort of a place I live in. Write again, Pal, Bob Robert E. Hale sent this postcard in October 1944 from Montauk to his pal Carl, stationed on Manus Island off northern Papua New Guinea, during World War II, while both men were serving in the U.S…. Read more »
One of seven children, Sarah (King) Tuthill was sent at age 6 to Montauk to live with Loretta Dickinson, a friend of her mother’s who lived in “better circumstances” and had indicated that “she would like to have one of the girls.” In an oral history interview in 1967, when she was 81, Sarah… Read more »