Get the back-history of East Hampton Village’s commercial district presented by East Hampton historian Hugh King and The Anchor Society founder Bess Rattray in a talk at East Hampton Library on Friday, July 18, at 6 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.
What kinds of colorful, quirky, practical, and whimsical shops could be found “upstreet” in the decades before Prada, Vuitton and Valentino arrived? What was the business district’s retail culture like for shoppers 50 or 100 years ago?
Travel back in time for a fun and informative virtual “walking tour” — with archival images, personal recollections, and video — that will highlight a variety of storefronts and business buildings, providing not just a hit of nostalgia, but a blueprint for creative ways that community can come together to return heart and soul to Main Street.
Hugh King is the East Hampton Town and Village Historian, the Town Crier and the Historic Site Director for the three Village Windmills and Home Sweet Home Museum. King graduated from East Hampton High School and later returned to work in the East Hampton schools. In addition to teaching for 33 years, he was active in local theater productions from 1963 to 1999, and he’s studied local history since the 1980s.
Bess Rattray, a 13th-generation East Hamptonite, writes a column called “The Shipwreck Rose” for The East Hampton Star and is employed as operations manager at The Church arts center in Sag Harbor. For nearly two decades before that, she was a senior editor at Vogue. She is the founder and chairwoman of The Anchor Society of East Hampton, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering commerce that serves community.
East Hampton Library is at 159 Main Street in East Hampton. For more details, visit easthamptonlibrary.org.
Staff Writer on Jul 17, 2025