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It was an April morning. Anne Kirsch sat at a table in her Westhampton Beach home with Ruth Duvall and Jackie Bennett, answering Ellen Loos’s and Cherie Magee’s questions about the history of the village and surrounding area.
And they could not stop laughing hysterically.
The childhood friends remembered Village Constable Winfred Eager—a well-known horseman with long hair, who went by “Wild Bill of the East”—who used to crack a whip, riding down Main Street, while the local kids, including the three ladies, would hide inside the stores until he passed.
“Half the stuff we talked about, you couldn’t put in the paper,” Mr. Kirsch laughed last week during a telephone interview.
Recounting the story for Mr. Loos and Ms. Magee, the natives helped compile information for the Westhampton Beach Historical Society’s exhibit, “Our Village ... Peddlers to Boutiques”—on view through September 20 at the Tuthill Museum—after Ms. Kirsch had suggested the idea of showing the growth of Westhampton Beach’s downtown.
The roundtable discussion sent Ms. Kirsch on a mission into one of her closets. She rummaged through it until she found a specific brown paper bag she had stowed away there, containing two vintage wool swimsuits from her father, Herbert N. Schwartz, who ran Schwartz’s Department Store on Main Street—which is now Books & Books—from the 1930s through the 1970s.
Today, one of those swimsuits is fitted tightly to a cloth mannequin at the Tuthill Museum on Mill Road—just down the road from where Ms. Kirsch grew up.
“We thought we wanted to look at all the different businesses in Westhampton and the area,” said Bob Murray, president of the Historical Society, “and trace their origins.”
Although some of Westhampton’s eldest locals can remember as far back as the 1930s and 1940s, Mr. Murray said, the village’s commerce history traces all the way back to the late 1800s—the impetus behind “Our Village ... Peddlers to Boutiques.” On display since mid-June, the exhibit has seen both local visitors and tourists every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Last month, Don and Jane Warren were in town from Southport, North Carolina, visiting with Ms. Duvall when she took them to the museum after hours. Looking at the “Markets & Groceries” collection, Ms. Warren noticed the label under a photograph of the Quogue & Westhampton Beach Market, noting that it was formerly known as “Weixelbaum’s”—coincidentally, the maiden name she gave up in 1968 when she married her husband.
“This kind of connection generates more history,” Mr. Murray said, “and that’s what we’re trying to do—get people to tell their stories.”
Displayed next to Ms. Kirsch’s swimsuit, as well as the baby outfit and her father’s ledger that she also found in her home, are items from The Orient Shop, a historic retail store that once sat next door to her father’s shop on Main Street. According to the comment book on the front desk of the Tuthill Museum, a Charles Zaloom, now residing in Mattituck, “has better photos of the Orient Shop for us from his grandfather.”
Mr. Zaloom is the son of Charles B. Zaloom and Elsie Jacobs Zaloom, explained Mr. Murray, who opened the store after moving to Westhampton Beach—trading a life of peddling silk linens in Patterson, New Jersey, for selling men’s and women’s clothing.
In another room sits a rusty shopping cart sized for vintage Coca-Cola wooden crates that was donated by Ms. Magee’s 86-year-old mother, Rosemarie Carter, who acquired the cart from Victor’s Market when the store closed.
Ms. Magee had worked at Victor’s Market one summer in the 1970s as a teenager—before the village had an A&P, now Waldbaums.
“It may be just a building,” Ms. Magee said. “For many, it’s much more personal.”
The area’s history resonates with many of the museum’s guests, Mr. Murray agreed, pointing to the aged dining menus a few visitors had been discussing the week prior. “When people come here on Saturdays,” he said, “they just hang out and they start talking about their memories of what they had here as a family.”
The Westhampton Beach Historical Society will exhibit “Our Village ... Peddlers to Boutiques” every Saturday, through September 20, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Tuthill Museum on Mill Road. Admission is free. For more information, visit whbhistorical.org.
on Aug 12, 2014