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 Leisuramas was brilliant – including, in 1963, a full-sized, fully decorated model home that inhabited the ninth floor of Macy’s department store in New York City. So why not try to do something like that more than half a century later?
This past summer the Montauk Historical Society hosted an immersive exhibit recreating the interior of a Leisurama home in the former house of Carl Fisher, Montauk’s early and very vigorous promoter, a site now operated by the society.
A Twister board on the Fisher house front porch greeted visitors. Inside, the stage for the exhibit (which occupied only part of the Fisher House) was set by clever props like a humongous television airing Mr. Clean commercials and other vintage shows. Pan Am drink stirrers and cigarette packs were set on an original Leisurama end table. Photographs from the 1960s were enlarged to provide bona fide “views” of the yard through make-believe windows. There was a poster of the 1964-65 World’s Fair, Life magazines ready for a read, a tin of Sucrets, and Princess phones that played, when you put the receiver to your ear, brief narratives by people who spent childhood summers in the Culloden Shores summer colony.
A capsule of the exhibit is on view in the Montauk Library’s Local History Exhibit Center now through the end of April. The display reviews the Montauk Historical Society’s goals for the exhibit at the Carl Fisher House, the history behind it, and how they told the story. The display case features original Malmac tableware, textiles, photographs, objects, and souvenirs of the era. Meanwhile, videos from the “Leisurama generation” play on an adjacent screen.
If you can’t make it to the library but still want to learn more about the Montauk Historical Society’s exhibit, you can take a virtual tour on its website.
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