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1950: Hamptons' population
had doubled in 50 years, and the beaches ruled.
Postcards
from The Lost Hamptons © Steven
Petrow 2004, used with permission of Arcadia Publishing |
I have read any number of books about the
East End of Long Island--some good, some bad, most plain dreadful--but
I thought there was something left still unsaid. I found myself
looking for that story, a Californian, arriving at the doorstep
of the august East Hampton Library with a laptop, cell phone, and
decaf latte in hand. Ducking into the Pennypacker Long Island Collection,
the library's "fireproof" rare book room, I spiraled
out of the twenty-first century, greeted by an antiquated card
catalog (with its own ... unique take on the Dewey decimal system),
a "no pen" dictum, and a bevy of other rules and regulations
said to protect the books but meant, perhaps, to intimidate newcomers.
My family has owned property in Southampton for nearly a half-century,
but the Petrow house stands "north of the highway" in
a district known as North Sea and, humorously, [until] ... the
last century as the "Dead Sea."
Still, the venerable librarian Dorothy King, whose family first
came to the East End in the late 1600s, seemed at first impervious
to my comparatively shallow roots. For weeks, I was lost, searching
for my muse in musty boxes and dusty books. On my best behavior,
I complied in calling her Miss King, while she firmly, albeit kindly,
kept me mindful of the rules: no cell phones, no water, and, of
course, no pens!
Then one day, Miss King asked me to call her "Dorothy" and
inquired, "Would you like to see the picture postcards that
were donated to the library last year?" "Have you shown
them to a lot of other people?" the journalist in me replied. "Not
really," she answered. Not only was I thrilled to have Miss
King lower her guard, but the postcards delivered a riveting visual
narrative of this quaint and picturesque town. Even better, most
of the hand-tinted postcards had been secreted away for decades,
as were those to be discovered later at the Southampton Historical
Museum and in the even vaster collection of Edward Woodward.
These postcards portray the quiet villages, historic homes, and
privet-lined lanes of the East End. They depict life in the Hamptons
as we have never seen it before. Filled with the high drama of
celebrity, the glorious architecture of the time, and the quiet
splendor of the East End's landscapes and seascapes, these photographs
allow us to experience a world all but swallowed by time.
--Steven Petrow, excerpted from The Lost Hamptons
Petrow '78, the
author of three books, has written for The Los Angeles Times,
Life magazine, and Salon.com. He lives in Berkeley, California.
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