Dear Friend,
“A lot of people take the history of East Hampton very seriously,” wrote T.H. Breen in his book, Imagining the Past: East Hampton Histories. While Breen didn’t mean it as a compliment, I’m very grateful that we have an abundance of historical organizations throughout East Hampton Town preserving and interpreting our community’s past. For example, I recently attended a walking tour of Wainscott that we cohosted with the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, which was presented by Esperanza Leon of the Wainscott Heritage Project.
One of the sites Esperanza showed us is where Wainscott’s post office was located on Main Street before the current one was constructed in 1978. According to an article in Dan’s Papers that year, the former post office, which has a commemorative plaque on the façade, was built circa 1949 and owned by the postmaster, Ethel Pearson. After she retired in 1973, Ethel didn’t want to sell her property, and since there was a 300 person wait list for post office boxes in Wainscott, the US Postal Service arranged to build their current facility on Montauk Highway.
Recently, the Wainscott Heritage Project received funding from the Preservation League of New York to begin identifying historic properties in Wainscott and understanding their local, state and/or national significance. If you’re interested in getting involved in the process, I encourage you to participate in their Reconnaissance Survey.
Sincerely,
Steve Long, Executive Director