'Oh, That's Another Story' Captures Sag Harbor As It Was, And Never Will Be Again

Sag Harbor is a special place, a small town with a colorful past and a sophisticated present. Its past is not unlike that of “Grover’s Corners”—the fictional village of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”—with a whaling history. In the latter part of the last century, it has been the “un-Hampton,” where blue collar workers and “plain folks” rub elbows with artists and writers.

But the captains of industry have arrived and Sag Harbor is changing. It is in danger of losing at least some of its unique character.

In an attempt to record some of that character, Alexandra Eames and Whitney Hansen have produced their delightful book, “Oh, That’s Another Story: Images and Tales of Sag Harbor” (Harbor Electronic Publishing, 127 pp., $40). The title is a refrain they heard many times when a scandal or embarrassing incident was brought up in conversation.

The idea for the book, explained Ms. Eames, “came to Whitney and me on a walk around our village. We were chatting about the amusing stories we had heard over the years and the fact that many of them might disappear as Sag Harbor, the gritty factory town, evolved into an upscale resort in the twenty-first century. In the next minute we had decided to collect as many of these tales [as we could] by interviewing our friends and neighbors and combining them with Whitney’s paintings in a book.”

Ms. Eames is an interior designer and journalist who has written several books on design, and a founding member of the Sag Harbor Historical Society. Whitney Hansen is an artist whose works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Scripps College Museum in California, and the Bowdoin College Museum in Maine. They are the dual stage managers giving us the lowdown on this Grover’s Corners on the harbor, highlighting the various buildings and people who have populated Sag Harbor since 1700, and illuminating its history, both macro- and microcosmic.

Sag Harbor is a village of ethnic variety. There are Polish and Italian neighborhoods, with residents whose ancestors were brought to Sag Harbor by Joseph Fahy’s watchcase factory. Eastville is an enclave populated by the middle-class African-American and Shinnecock descendants of those who worked in the whaling industry. It is multi-ethnic, but is one of the most famous resort communities settled largely by African-Americans. Eastville is said to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad, moving escaped slaves from the south into Canada.

Sag Harbor is a village of churches. Organized in 1840 and built shortly after, St. David AME Zion Church is a landmark in Eastville. The oldest synagogue in Suffolk County, Temple Adas Israel, sits in Sag Harbor. The Egyptian revival Presbyterian Church is noted for the fact that its steeple was blown off during the 1938 hurricane. And the original Methodist Church served as a landmark for sailors, but unfortunately was sold as a private dwelling in this century.

The book covers so much: industry, farms, shops and businesses, gas stations, bars and restaurants, cinema and theater, social clubs and civic organizations, the fire department, schools, antiques shops and galleries, the library, and Canio’s Books.

Colorful characters weave their way through Sag Harbor’s history, filling the book with delightful stories. One of the most amusing is the story of the dog Ricky, owned by the North family who ran the Tuller School at Maycroft in North Haven. Every day, he would wait on Route 114 for a passerby to take him into the village to the A&P, where he was given a bone. Then he perambulated through the village and, at the end of the day, hitchhiked his way back to North Haven.

Then there was the story of Mrs. Alippo, who owned an Italian restaurant where Muse is now. She would always spit on the frying pan to make sure it was hot. And in the village’s heyday, the American Hotel offered a meal, a bath and a room for the night for $2.25.

The Sag Harbor Express reported with a casual and colorful ease that is unknown today. An article covering a village board meeting closed with this paragraph: “Lively audience participation in the argument lent color and flavor to the proceedings seldom encountered at Board meetings. Both Mrs. William Lloyd Bassett and Mrs. Douglas Gardner made cogent comments of a political nature which, in the interest of ‘harmony’ had better be skipped. (It’s a pity though.)”

Finally, it must be said that the illustrations by Ms. Hansen are simply extraordinary. Her artistic process is unique. Each painting begins with a woodcut, which records the basic shapes of the subject. Colors are then applied to the woodcut and, while still wet, the woodcut is then pressed onto a sheet of rice paper. The prints are dried and then Ms. Hansen adds detail and oil paint, turning the print into a painting. The result is remarkably evocative and unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

“Oh, That’s Another Story,” both words and illustrations, is an unalloyed delight.