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Montauk Main Street, 1920s and Carl Fisher’s seven-story Montauk Beach Development Corporation administrative building. (Credit: Montauk Beach Development Corporation Collection).[/caption]
By Annette Hinkle
Montauk is a place that has been defined by the sea like no other community on the South Fork. It also happens to sit at the literal and figurative end of the world.
Surrounded on water by three sides, Montauk is linked to the rest of Long Island by the Napeague Stretch, a long, low-lying length of sand prone to washouts during bad ocean storms. On its eastern side where land meets sea, the Montauk Point Lighthouse marks the very edge of America.
No wonder Montauk is referred to as “The End” by the locals.
In her new book “Images of America: Montauk,” published by Arcadia Publishing, Robin Strong, archivist at The Montauk Public Library, has assembled a photographic history of the hamlet that revisits its many identities over the years, first as a pastureland, then later as a fishing and resort community and even as a military facility.
To celebrate the publication of the book, this Saturday, The Montauk Library will offer “Images of America: Montauk” a slide presentation highlighting some of the photographs in Ms. Strong’s book (many of which are in the archive at the library and have been donated by Montauk residents). The library is also opening an exhibition that same night featuring images from the book that have been printed, framed and hung in the Suzanne Koch Gosman Room on the lower level of the library.
“To me, the most important thing about this book, and Montauk, is its location, starting with the lighthouse,” explains Ms. Strong. “It’s strategically placed along the Atlantic seaboard.”
Montauk’s geography was not only important in terms of its fishing industry, but it also has seen some military action, from Revolutionary War skirmishes to Cold War tactics exercised at Camp Hero. In 1898, Theodore Roosevelt brought 30,000 troops to Montauk to recuperate after the Spanish American War (many were suffering from malaria and the theory was that the isolation would keep the disease from spreading to the general population), and during both WWI and WWII, the military ran exercises in Montauk, flew dirigibles and tested torpedoes in Ft. Pond Bay.
“It’s all about land use and the isolation,” adds Ms. Strong. “You could bring guys back from a war and quarantine them in Montauk in 1898.”
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Advertisement for land in Montauk, 1940s. This ad in the Daily Mirror was a promotion that offered lots in Hither Hills for $100 if you subscribed to the paper. Subscribers had to buy at least two lots, but no more than five. (Credit: Donald and Jennie Balcuns Collection).[/caption]
Though it’s officially located within the Town of East Hampton, Montauk’s geographical position goes a long way toward explaining why this hamlet has always been fiercely independent and a little bit naughty. This is a community defined by those who had to eke out a hardscrabble existence, starting with the shepherds and the lighthouse keepers in the 17th and 18th centuries, followed by the fishermen and bootleggers who came later, to say nothing of the waves of workers who have traditionally come here each summer to cater to vacationers in search of fun and sun.
Distilling the history of Montauk down to a single book is no easy feat, but for Ms. Strong, it was the old timers with a living memory of Montauk who truly inspired her and gave focus to the project. These were elderly residents who, over the course of the last decade or so, shared their memories of Montauk with Ms. Strong in video interviews at the library.
“The book started with the documentaries of the old timers,” explains Ms. Strong. “That was my favorite part of the book – for me it was learning from the long time residents about their stories and their anecdotes.”
“The best ones were the prohibition stories,” she adds. “The little old ladies don’t know if it’s okay to talk about even now. They’d hide the money in the roasting pans and if the troopers came in, they’d be sitting there knitting saying, ‘We have nothing to hide.’”
“A lot of the fishing people got involved in bootlegging, it was so quiet out here,” says Ms. Strong. “This was rum row.”
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Fort Pond Bay Fishing Village, 1930s. The fishing village was self-contained with restaurants, fishing stations, stores, a post office and houses populated by families from the North Fork, Nova Scotia and Scandinavia. (John Ecker Collection).[/caption]
The book is peppered with photographs of the people and places that defined Montauk in those days, including the long defunct Fishing Village, which was built on Fort Pond Bay in the area north of the terminus of the Long Island Rail Road. This was a self-sufficient neighborhood populated by a largely immigrant collection of fishing families from Nova Scotia and Scandinavia and the village was comprised of small houses, stores, restaurants, a post office and commercial fishing stations all largely built out of the cast off remnants of fish boxes and crates.
But Montauk has always been “a tale of two cities,” so to speak and the 1920s illustrate the dueling nature of Montauk as well as any period has. So in those days while the locals were fishing and bootlegging (and living in cast-off fish boxes), developer Carl Fisher was setting out to create a grand vision of Montauk as the Miami Beach of the north.
In the early 1920s, Mr. Fisher bought 9,800 acres in Montauk (which is pretty much all of it) for $2.5 million and created the Montauk Beach Development Corporation. He proceeded to build several Tudor-style buildings, several of which remain today, including the Montauk Manor, the “high rise” in the center of Montauk, a massive indoor tennis auditorium (now the Montauk Playhouse) and a neighborhood full of worker’s cottages off Second House Road.
“The high rise was the administration building,” explains Ms. Strong. “He’d take you up in the penthouse so you could pick out the land you wanted to buy. That’s where he did all the business.”
“He wanted to create a place where you had everything for every ilk of sportsman, outdoors and indoors,” she adds.
Mr. Fisher even turned Lake Montauk into a harbor by cutting an inlet to the sea, changing that body of water (and Montauk) forever.
But Montauk has always been a place of boom and bust and his vision never fully came to pass. For Mr. Fisher, the bust arrived with the crash of 1929 and the depression. All of his Montauk property went into receivership in 1936 and Montauk fell into decline. Today, the handful of Fisher buildings that exist illustrate a grand vision derailed.
But Montauk again is in a boom period and this time is in the midst of re-discovery by 20-somethings from the city. While this invasion may feel unprecedented to many Montauk residents, Ms. Strong knows that they’ve been here before.
“Imagine the people living in Fishing Village,” says Ms. Strong. “Talk about us watching the hipsters today. Back then, they called the manor ‘the castle on the hill’ while these kids were living in houses made out of fishing boxes.”
“There are two Montauks at any given moment. It’s like a cycle,” she adds. “It’s nothing new.”
The book launch and photo exhibit for Robin Strong’s “Images of America: Montauk” begins at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 23 with a gallery opening followed by Ms. Strong’s slide presentation and talk at 7:30 p.m. at The Montauk Library, 871 Montauk Highway, Montauk. The photographs remain on view at the library through Labor Day. Admission is free. Call (631) 668-3377 for more information or visit montauklibrary.org.
