An earlier version of this post was published on August 30, 2023. It has been updated with additional images and information to reflect the passing of Maria-Louise Sidoroff, Ph.D., on May 9, 2024 at the age of 87. Maria-Louise Sidoroff, Ph.D., an anthropologist, was working as a waitress at Gosman’s Restaurant, whose owners she was… Read more »
Before Frank Tuma Sr. bought the Montauk Tavern 90 years ago, it was run as a sweet shop that “pulled off a clandestine existence during the Prohibition beginning in 1927” — at least according to a story in Dan’s Papers. “The speakeasy survived six years until 1933 when the ban of spirits was finally lifted,… Read more »
What a difference 32 years makes! Here are some photographs that were meant to be buried in a time capsule in 1992. Middle-school Montauk Girl Scouts were equipped with disposable cameras to record what Montauk looked like at the time, said Jane Liebell, who led the group: Top: Rita’s Stables, left, and the Blue Marlin…. Read more »
This photograph, from the Montauk Library’s Harry Bruno Collection, is labeled “Doolittle up a tree, Montauk, Sept. 1954.” Doolittle refers to General James H. Doolittle, a “fearless pilot [who] repeatedly risked his life to test the flight characteristics and limitations of experimental aircraft,” according to an article in Air & Space Forces magazine. As a… Read more »
What’s not to love about shad trees, which will soon be gracing the skyline with their gorgeous white tufts? There are four species of shadbush growing in Montauk, one of which is very rare. The shadbush is a member of the rose family that goes by many other names: shadblow, shadwood, serviceberry, juneberry, Amelanchier, wild… Read more »
The Parsons Inn, 1900s. | Albert Holden Collection, Montauk Library Archives. Right, Montauk’s first schoolhouse, the Hither Plain school, in 1918. It served children from Fort Pond Bay and the life-saving stations at Hither Plain and Ditch Plain. Turtle Hill and the entire Point seem to be an immense sand pile, packed so tight that… Read more »
Legend has it that Carleton Kelsey visited the Montauk Library when he was in his 90s to see if it was “worthy” of receiving a portion of his prize collection of historical photographs and postcards. It was, he determined not long before he died, so he donated what he had that was relevant to Montauk,… Read more »
Frank Borth dedicated this cartoon to Dr. Gavino Mapula, who practiced at the Montauk Medical Center for more than two decades. So many patients visited the doctor to have fishhooks removed that he had a collection of extracted ones on display in his office. Dr. Mapula marched at the head of the 1995 Montauk… Read more »
Above is Teresa Harrington Sarno | From an album of photographs taken by Maria-Louise Sidoroff, documenting the staff and kitchen during a 12-hour shift from dawn to dusk at Gosman’s Seafood Restaurant in Montauk, New York, on Labor Day Weekend, c. 1975, Montauk Library Archives Teresa Harrington Sarno at Gosman’s. | Teresa Harrington Sarno Photo… Read more »
“She came uninvited. She was 60 years old at that time,” Dan Rattiner wrote about his first encounter with Giorgina Reid in 1970, more than a decade before Women’s History Month became a thing. “And she said she could save the Montauk Lighthouse from falling into the sea. I was, at that time, 28, and… Read more »