Hamptons Living With a (Tree) Farm View

In the hypermarket that is today’s Hamptons real estate, a property bordering on an agricultural reserve has a powerful selling point. Anyone with a few million can have a McMansion, but is your vista protected from somebody else’s development? Still, there are reserves, and then there are reserves. And what I picked up from aContinue reading “Hamptons Living With a (Tree) Farm View”

Why the Hamptons Has No Bike Path Like This

Go to many affluent communities in North America and you notice some kind of safe cycling path. Not on the South Fork of Long Island. You do see, outside of winter, some intrepid bicyclists—occasionally I am one. A few streets have designated bike lanes, where vehicles shouldn’t be blocking, but rarely do these extend forContinue reading “Why the Hamptons Has No Bike Path Like This”

Was Hamptons Democrats’ Sweep a Clean One?

Election of Maria Moore as supervisor of Southampton town on Long Island was said by her backers to be a “green” triumph, but the Democrat got a big financial boost from a golf course mogul who masked his support.

Will Half a Billion Buy a B.A. in the Hamptons?

Word this week of a $500 million gift to Stony Brook University (a State University of New York branch on Long Island) can’t help but have East End residents wondering: Will this bring sustained academic life to town? For all its riches, the Hamptons does not have higher ed. The main Stony Brook campus isContinue reading “Will Half a Billion Buy a B.A. in the Hamptons?”

Summer Swells, Circa Hamptons 1957

The conceit of a series of posts here about the Hamptons is that, after a first rush of summer “colonies” that culminated in the Roaring Twenties, the East End of Long Island went through sleepy decades until a new wave of city money began to stir development again in the late 1960s. That is generallyContinue reading “Summer Swells, Circa Hamptons 1957”

When a Shopping Mall Came to the Hamptons

Articles appearing on the front pages of their weekly papers 50 years ago—Feb. 3, 1972—were a surprise to many who’d begun making the Hamptons a weekend or summer home. Construction was beginning on a shopping center in their idyllic midst. Plaza East would be a first…and remain to this day the only of its kind.Continue reading “When a Shopping Mall Came to the Hamptons”