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A newly renovated look for the former Gardiner estate featured on a postcard. PHOTO COURTESY LADIES VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT SOCIETY
The Southampton Historical Museums’ summer walking tours set out this weekend with a traverse along Foster Crossing, which was an old farm path until about a century ago. It’s said to be one of the few roads in Southampton Village where privet hedges do not conceal private residences.
Walkers will meet at the corner of Little Plains Road and Crossing Road in Southampton Village at 11 a.m. on Sunday, June 29. Leading the tour will be Emma Ballou, the museums’ curator. The tour ends with a visit to the historic Thomas Halsey Homestead, built in 1666.
Those who can’t make Sunday’s tour, which costs $10 and is free for museum members, can take heart: On Sunday, July 6, at 9 a.m., there will be a walking tour of St. Andrew’s Dune Church, which reputedly contains more objects of historical interest than any other church of its size in America. Roger Blaugh will lead this walk, which starts at 12 Gin Lane.
On July 20, the architect John David Rose will lead an 11 a.m. tour of the 1887 home of architect Robert Henderson Robert, who designed the Rogers Memorial Library and, also in 1887, remodeled Dune Church. “Wyndecote’s” is one of the first homes that transformed Southampton from a rustic village into a tourist destination, according to the historical museums. The architect leading the tour recently oversaw its restoration.
On July 27, a walking tour will take in Ox Pasture Road, one of the village’s oldest. Gary Lawrance of AIA Peconic will lead the tour, which begins at 3 p.m. on the public parking area at 14 Gin Lane. He’ll talk about the founding of Southampton’s summer colony and how the first summer residents from New York City settled in.
Rick Stott, also of AIA Peconic, will lead an August 3, 11 a.m., tour of Ox Pasture setting forth from the corner of First Neck and Ox Pasture roads. Some of the most notorious and infamous estates and “merchant-class families” in the country are said to have been established on this mile-long stretch.
Providing a change of pace, a nature walk at Conscience Point on August 10 at 11 a.m. will explore an area formed 20,000 years ago, when the glaciers receded. It was populated around 10000 BCE, according the historical museums, and the Shinnecock Indian Nation had developed a sophisticated culture there by 1000 CE that influenced other tribes along the Atlantic Coast. After English pioneers arrived in 1640, they created a busy harbor, called Feversham, that is today known as North Sea.
Howard Reisman, a biologist, will discuss the natural history an early colonial culture of North Sea and Peconic Bay.
The final tour, at 11 a.m. on August 17, will take in the North Sea burial grounds at the corner of North Sea and Millbrook roads. The cemetery most like was started in the 1660s to serve the busy port of Feversham, according to the museums. John Griffin, a descendant of the port’s English founders, will talk about the people who lived and died in the community. The meeting place will be the corner of North Sea and Millbrook roads.
Further information is available at www.southamptonhistoricalmuseum.org.
27east on Jun 23, 2014