| Issue #35, November 24, 2006 |
Two Parties
Brunch on Further Lane, Thanksgiving on the Reservation
By Dan Rattiner
Late Saturday morning on November 11, we went to a brunch at the oceanfront home of Adelaide de Menil and Ted Carpenter on Further Lane. In 1973, Ted and Adelaide bought what had been a 38-acre farm on the ocean here. It was their intention to build a serene retreat for themselves and their family and friends, and they did. The farm was seeded and landscaped. Lawns appeared and shrubs and trees grew. But instead of hiring an architect to build them a grand home on the ocean, they decided to find old historic barns, stables, sheds and homes from elsewhere in the East Hampton community and bring them to the site, to create what basically would be an old European farm estate, such as you might find in the south of France.
During a three-year period, they purchased and had towed to the site a total of twelve buildings that ranged from between two hundred and three hundred and fifty years old. The least modest of them, no more than 2,500 square feet in total, was placed closest to the ocean, in back of the double dune, nearly a quarter mile from the surf to become their main house. A breezeway led to a barn, a magnificent open space two stories tall with a beamed ceiling. This space, perhaps another 600 square feet, would become their living room. And this is where this brunch took place.
* * *
On a rainy Thursday evening, November 16, just five days later, we went to a community dinner held at the Shinnecock Nation Meeting Hall on the waterfront Indian reservation in Southampton.
The reservation, a property of 750 acres, has belonged to the Indians for what undoubtedly is tens of thousands of years, although nobody really knows because, until the seventeenth century, no written records were kept. At one time, it is believed that the Shinnecocks owned much of the East End. In fact, at the present time, they are in court trying to get back about 11,000 acres of Southampton Township, which they say were taken from them by the English settlers in fraudulent transactions.
There are about 100 structures on these 750 acres, almost all of which were built within the last eighty years. Many of the earlier buildings were not built to standard building codes, because they didn’t have to be. This is the property of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, a separate entity from the United States, and the Nation has few building codes. (Buildings today are constructed to code because it is the right thing to do.) Structures include this meeting hall, several smoke shops, several food and beverage stores, a Shinnecock Nation museum, a Presybterian Church, a sports field and grandstands, an Indian ceremony platform, about 90 private homes and this meeting hall. There is also, across the street from the meeting hall, a medical clinic, recently built, and something everyone is very proud of.
The dinner at the Shinnecock Meeting Hall was held at 7 p.m. In the darkness of a November night, one enters the reservation by passing a sign that reads you are now on private property belonging to the Shinnecock Nation and you should Keep Out unless invited. The winding roads are paved, but there are no curbs or sidewalks or, in many areas, overhead street lights. Most are lined with heavy foliage. In the dark, you drive slowly, in case there are people out for a stroll at that hour. It is a rainy night, but it is warm. Sixty degrees.
* * *
Most of the homes along Further Lane in East Hampton where the de Menil-Carpenters live are gated, with an adjacent speaker and microphone system on the street side so you can state your business and ask to enter. If approved, the gates swing open by remote control, slowly, from wherever the occupants press the button.
The de Menil home, however, has no gate. There is simply a small sign at the driveway entrance by the side of the road with the street number alongside it. A cobbled road, made of Belgian bricks, leads you in and past two of the twelve old shingled structures, a small cottage and a stable that you can either go around or right through — large barn doors are open at front and back — so, ingeniously, the stable forms an arch. Then you proceed down a long graveled driveway, past a cluster of shingled structures that seem to primarily be a stable, tack house, riding ring and shed and you come to the main house.
The purpose of the brunch at the de Menil estate is to showcase the re-issuing of Peter Matthiessen’s book Men’s Lives. Matheissen, who lives in Sagaponack, is best known for his award winning and best selling book The Snow Leopard, about his search through the mountains of Southern Asia for a sighting of this elusive and endanged creature. But Matthiessen also has written a book about his experiences with the baymen and fishermen of East Hampton who call themselves Bonackers. Descended from blue collar workers in seventeenth century England, this clan of about 500 people came to East Hampton when the first settlers landed in 1639. They lived and worked in these parts, clamming and haul seining and fishing in small boats, to provide food for the table. Matthiessen, a member of the wealthy blueblood clan that built large summer cottages here in the early twentieth century, befriended many of these Bonackers, went on fishing trips with them and wrote a book about them which first appeared in 1988. Matthiessen attended the celebration of the reprinting of his book, of course, and graciously signed many of the purchased copies. Adelaide and Ted were there too, of course, greeting guests — a total of about 150 of them by my guess. Everyone stood around. Conversation largely consisted of talk about the recent elections, the War in Iraq, international affairs, interior decorating, fine art and the price of real estate — it has widely been reported, and denied that Ted and Adelaide would sell the property if the right person came along. Some said the property — without the buildings — could fetch $80 million. There were also discussions about the book, about the wonderful photographs that were in this edition, and about the grand, though financially difficult times the Bonackers had all those years ago. Now, with real estate prices through the roof, the Bonackers have moved away. They continue with their lifestyle, fishing and clamming, but now along the coastline of North Carolina, where they can afford to. At the brunch, even though the book was entirely about the Bonackers, there seemed to be just a few of them present — among them Arnold Leo.
* * *
The purpose of the dinner at the Shinnecock Tribal Reservation was Thanksgiving. It was a week before the American Thanksgiving, but it was the Tribal celebration of this day, and perhaps half the tribe, about 150 people, were seated at the tables in the Meeting Hall, along with about twenty invited guests, among them myself and my son, David Lion. Conversation was largely, almost entirely, about uncles and aunts and children and elders. This was a family affair and everybody wanted to know how everybody else was doing and who had some sort of accomplishment and who had some sort of trouble and how they might help. The tribe is a family after all. People sat for the most part at the tables and talked with one another or visited with some people at another table. There was much hugging going on.
There was a podium with a microphone. Lance Gumbs, who is on the Tribal Council, acted as Master of Ceremonies and some of the guests were introduced, and one in particular, Dr. Linda Bruno, who is about to retire from her post as School Superintendant was given an award of a beautiful Indian blanket to wear around her shoulders for the help she had given to the tribe. As part of the ceremony, half a dozen different tribal women, one at a time, walked up and hugged her and kissed her. The lead woman had been Lance’s mother, Harriet, now in her 80s. There were young men sitting on the floor in the back, beating drums and chanting. People applauded when Dr. Bruno thanked everyone. It was a moving ceremony.
The dinner, served from a buffet by waiters and waitresses who were mostly young teenage tribal members (several girls wore black t-shirts that had big block print white letters on the back that read TRIBAL CLEAN-UP. I noted to Ron Richard with whom I was sitting that there would be no getting out of that job.)
When it was over, the entire waitstaff and the kitchen staff were invited by Lance to come out into the main dining hall and get a round of applause for the wonderful meal. Some came out, then more, then when all of them were out, they were cheered and applauded.
At another point, two young women stood up front and held up sweat shirts with the very colorful great seal of the Shinnecock Indian Nation on it. They would cost $20 for a regular sweatshirt or $45 for a hooded sweatshirt with a zipper. I bought one. Other tribal members went around selling lottery tickets. I bought some of those.
* * *
Serving the brunch at de Menil’s was a well dressed professional catering staff in the traditional white shirt and black trousers uniform.
This was not an egg and omelette and orange juice brunch. It was a put-some-hair-on-your-chest brunch consisting of raw clams and oysters on the half shell with hot sauce, served out on the front porch of the barn as you came in. Once inside, there was a bar with Bloody Marys, Vodka or Scotch straight up if that’s what you wanted, but no orange juice. There were also breakfast quiches and shrimp cocktail with red sauce. Later, there was milder fare — fresh baked cakes and rolls and coffee to cool you down. The book being re-issued was hardbound, beautifully boxed, and numbered in an edition of 500. You could buy one for $1,200, with a portion of the proceeds going to benefit the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association and the Peconic Baykeeper. Chris and I split the cost of buying one.
* * *
The Shinnecock Thanksgiving dinner was cooked right there in the kitchen of the meeting house and it consisted of big portions of turkey, stuffing, gravy, sliced pork, sweet potatoes, string beans and spinach piled high on big plates. The drink was apple cider.
At the dinner, I talked with Dwayne Duncan, who I know and who works as a bus driver for the Hampton Jitney, with Ron Richard, who proudly told us about his son at the Ross School and his daughter at Yale. I also talked with Lance Gumbs about the hopes and dreams the tribe has for federal recognition and the ability to create a gambling casino. Such a casino would solve many of the tribe’s financial problems. Almost all politicians off the reservation favor eventual federal recognition but oppose the casino plan, at least in the narrow confines of the East End. Lance pointed out that with federal recognition comes the right to build a casino. He is correct about that.
* * *
At the brunch, I talked to Adelaide de Menil about her plan to return all of these historic buildings back into the East Hampton community. She has held them and protected them and maintained them for an entire generation at her own expense. Now she hopes to give them back, also at her own expense. She offered one to the East Hampton Library (it was politely refused — they don’t have room on the property anymore), and she offered two to the Town Marine Museum on Bluff Road that will be accepted. Six of them are intended to be placed on the campus of East Hampton Town Hall, where they will serve as offices. There are discussions underway on where to put the rest.
I also spoke with Ted Carpenter, who showed me photographs taken on a small island in the Arctic Sea north of Siberia. Ted is an anthropologist and in visiting there he and others recovered Indian artifacts dating back as far as 30,000 B.C. He showed me photographs of some of their finds, all of which have been chipped out of the frozen Arctic ice. They are in magnificent condition. They include arrowheads, harpoon spears, ropes and boat spars. He hopes to go back there soon to search for more.
I first met Adelaide de Menil in 1973 out in front of the East Hampton Post Office. She was looking intently through the lens of a camera she had mounted on a tri-pod that was focused westward, up the Montauk Highway toward town, where little by little, workmen were moving a cottage built in 1773 called “The Purple House” from the East Hampton Library property down the street to her homesite on Further Lane. Overhead wires were down. A workman on the white line was clutching a traffic light. A truck driver was at the wheel of a large truck pulling a steel platform that supported the old home. It was on wheels. I asked Adelaide what she was doing and she told me she was making a film. The camera was automatically taking one frame per second. And in the end, when you replayed it at regular speed, it would appear to show the whole day’s move in just twenty minutes.
* * *
I met Harriet Gumbs in 1963. She was attending an event at the Scotch Mist Inn in Southampton, a beautiful old mansion that looked down a sweeping lawn to the Indian Reservation and Shinnecock Bay and ocean beyond.
The Scotch Mist Inn had been sold. It was about to become the administration building for a new college and there was some event or other taking place there. We talked about the coming LIU Southampton College and about the tribe and the elders who ran the tribal council at that time. The elder’s policy was that everything was secret. It was nobody’s business what went on there, and whenever I called them to ask about something, that’s what they told me. At the Scotch Mist Inn I complained to her about that, and she said that was just the way it was. Her son Lance must have been about five years old at the time.
I have a photograph of she and I standing on the porch of the Inn that year somewhere. At the dinner, I went over and we gave one another a big hug.
De Menil-Carpenter House Sidebar:
By Sabrina C. Mashburn
In 1973, Schlumberger heiress and photographer Adelaide de Menil and her husband, anthropologist and author Edmund Carpenter, purchased 40 acres of beachfront property on Amagansett’s Further Lane. While their original plan for the property involved erecting an exact replica of de Menil’s parents’ Philip Johnson-designed 1950s Modernist house that is in Houston, the home they finally did construct was something else entirely. Over the years, Adelaide and her husband salvaged eight of the East End’s fragile 18th and 19th-Century structures, and brought them to their property and grafted them together or placed them in context with one another in such a way as to construct an estate, complete with a guest cottage, caretaker’s cottage, pool house, entryway and main house.
Now the couple will reverse the process and these historic buildings will return to the community. Six of them will be incorporated into a new design for East Hampton Town Hall, planned by Robert A.M. Stern architects, and two more will be used to enhance already-established historical sights in the town. Below is a list of the properties being donated, where they were originally built or found, and where they are going.
1773 Purple House/ Hedges House
Orig. Location: E.H. Main Street between the EH Lib, and EH Star.
New Location: Town Hall main building
1747 Nathaniel Hand House
Orig. Location: Next to the A Farmers Market on A’s Main St.
New Location: Town Hall main bldg.
18th C Parson’s Barn
Orig.: North Main St. in EH
New: Town Hall main bldg.
1820 Bridgehampton Barn
Orig: part of de Menil main house
Now: Town Hall main bldg.
1730 House from Peach Farm in NW Woods
Orig:
New: office building in Town Hall complex
18th C Baker Barn
Orig: N side of Pantigo Rd. just W of Town Hall
New: Entrance way to Town Hall complex
19th C Corn Crib
Orig: Lester Farm on Skimhampton Rd in EH
New: Mulford Farm on James Lane in EH
WWII Coast Guard Watch Station
Orig: de Menil property beach
New: EH Town Marine Museum on Bluff Rd. in Amagansett
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