Westhampton Beach Historical Society Preserves Cement Art From Rogers Bridge

A little piece of Westhampton Beach history can be seen almost flying off the pavement on Mill Road where two cement panels depicting seagulls in flight are now on display after having been saved from the former Beach Lane bridge.

The friezes, which are outside the Westhampton Beach Historical Society’s Tuthill House, are just two of many cement art pieces that were replaced on the bridge during a renovation project in 1995.

While most of the tiles have deteriorated in storage over the past two decades, these two had been on display in a private yard on Moniebogue Lane and only recently were donated to the historical society. Over the past year, they have been cleaned up and restored before a local contractor designed a set of braces to hold the pieces upright.

“This is something that is our history,” historical society Treasurer Bob Murray said in an interview this month. “The history of this village is being destroyed with the new structures and efforts to rebuild new homes, so it is important to have these.”

The bridge was originally built in 1935 with funding through the Works Progress Administration—an initiative created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt through the New Deal that was designed to create jobs. Under the eight-year span of the WPA, thousands of new buildings, bridges and dams were commissioned, including the Beach Lane Bridge, also known as Rogers Bridge.

Part of the WPA was the Federal Art Project, which commissioned artists to contribute to new infrastructure. In Westhampton Beach, Lieutenant H.M. Ericsson designed the bas-reliefs that adorned the upper portion of the bridge tower.

The design depicted scenes of East End life: seagulls mid-flight, hunters and fishermen at work, geese floating in the water.

“They wrapped completely around the east tower of the bridge,” Mr. Murray said. “They all depicted local scenes.”

But by 1995, the bridge was in serious disrepair and the village opted to revitalize one of the main thoroughfares to Dune Road and the beach. As a result, the custom friezes were removed and replaced with mass produced pieces. Most of the cement tiles—it is unclear how many there are—remain in storage at the Westhampton Beach maintenance yard. But according to Mr. Murray, they have been laying flat for the past 20 years causing them to deteriorate past the point of being able to decipher the pictures.

The last two, however, were kept separately standing on display in the front yard of former village Mayor Bart Wilenski. Last year, when Mr. Wilenski sold his property on Moniebogue Lane, he donated both pieces, which stand roughly 2 feet tall, to the historical society.

“We looked at the ones in the maintenance yard to try and bring them here but some of them are larger than this and you can barely distinguish what they are because they have been laying flat for 20 years,” Mr. Murray said. “When you lay them flat they get ruined, but these two are perfectly preserved.”

Refurbishing the cement art was easy, according to Mr. Murray, who said that with a little elbow grease they were able to scrub the friezes until they looked like new. Shortly after, local residents John and Dot Berdinka saw the pieces while walking by the historical society and approached the group about finding a proper display.

“Nobody had any idea on exactly how to mount them,” Mr. Berdinka said. “But I had some materials that I thought would be suitable and I suggested a method. It sounded good to them.”

Over the course of one day, the husband and wife duo attached steel holders over the top of the cement panels, and braced them to a thick wooden beam that was driven into the ground.

Now, the pieces can be seen from the sidewalk on Mill Road. They are stationed just behind the Tuthill House Museum at 101 Mill Road, near the new firehouse.

“They are a part of the village history and I thought they were neat,” Mr. Berdinka said of why he offered his services. “They were going to decay the way they were sitting there because they are supposed to be stored on the vertical so their exposure to weather and deterioration would be minimized. I thought they could be there for a long time if displayed properly.”