Letters

Has anyone noticed that the tone of Southampton has changed? Not the one evidenced by loud noise, aggressively dangerous driving, arrogance, the never-ending pulsation of speakers, popup shops and slobs. I mean the palette of warm earth tones, yellows, lush greens, blues, pinks to orange, and purples that suffused the homes and gardens of the Southampton of memory.

With the onslaught of overdevelopment, and the aesthetics of show and sterility, most small, individual houses and gardens (formerly known as “homes”) were bulldozed and replaced with rows of dead-white, black-windowed McMorgue-Mansions.

Gone are the weathering shades of shingles and, now and again, the warm glow of tile roofs, or the door painted periwinkle to match the wild chicory, which grew everywhere. Instead, uniform, dead white mall-worthy, cookie-cutter houses gleaming with synthetic “wood” siding, and blank windows, sporting less than uplifting elevations and pitched roofs render the village faceless and characterless.

Gone, too, are the residents, as the stadium-lit emptiness of these residential tombs is broken for only the few months of the year when the owners — or their renters — hit town.

Gone, too, are many colorful people: repairmen, shopkeepers, gardeners, local artists of note as well as those weekend artists, great cooks and chefs, designers, writers and dabblers who made a haven out here to escape the city — not imposed it where it wasn’t desired.

Shrubs, trees, bushes, flowers that used to provide shade, lush greenery and a rainbow of color, mowed down. Instead, thin, uniform rows of arborvitae or cypress trees, destined to remain straggly for decades — always assuming they survive — rim the properties.

In the village, this dead “streetscape” is encouraged by the daft stance of the weaponized amateurs sitting on the Architectural Review Board who issue contradictory and destructive decisions while bloviating about “preservation” minutiae. Developer money, institutionalized inequity, and blatant greed and corruption have leached not only the color but the individuality and life out of this place.

As small, “workforce” houses go down like dominoes to clear space for more drab white whales with their requisite pools, porches, pillars and outbuildings, elected officials continue to hypocritically bemoan the need for “workforce housing,” as they get ready to cash in on the new ill-advised and ill-defined Community Housing Fund.

Aside from the utilitarian palette imposed on everyone’s sensibilities by conformity, and a woeful lack of vision or talent, the one color that emerges as the only color that matters, and ultimately shades everything, is green — as in money, and, ultimately, decay.

Moneygreen: The primer under the dead suburban white facades is the root of the pandemic of blank replication and atrocious architecture rendering Southampton ugly, tasteless and colorless.

Frances Genovese

Southampton