| Issue #36, December 1, 2006 |
Fort Knox
Bridgehampton Bank Builds Solid & Safe & It’s a Problem
By Dan Rattiner
There is, in East Hampton this fall, a very interesting battle going on involving a bank. Both sides argue they are on the side of tradition and the other side is not. The odd thing is that both are right.
The bank in question is the Bridgehampton Bank, headquartered in a big brick building with three-story-high columns out front, a clock tower at the top and a serious, Fort Knox demeanor that certainly announces to the world — BANK. Your money is safe here.
This bank wants to build a new branch in East Hampton up near the railroad tracks and so they have designed some plans for it. The branch is also to be made of brick, of course. And so they have submitted plans for their new bank to the powers that be, and in this way, the public, particularly the public that lives up near the railroad tracks, has gotten to see it. They don’t like it one bit.
Hearings have been held. People have yelled and shouted. The bankers have, as bankers sometimes do, held fast.
I’d like to point out at this particular time that before the Bridgehampton Bank built their new three-story headquarters with the clock tower just out of Bridgehampton to the west, they had as their headquarters for more than one hundred years, a big, square two-story brick building right in the center of downtown Bridgehampton. It was the biggest, strongest-looking building in the area and when the farmers came into town with their bags of money in those bygone days, this big strong brick bank was where they put it. So for a century, this has been the tradition for the people who run the Bridgehampton Bank.
The people who are opposing this new Bridgehampton Bank building are opposing it because it is brick. And practically everything around it is residential and wood and shingled. One or two are even Victorian.
In an odd quirk of fate, this section of East Hampton is known as the Gingerbread Section, named not because there are a huge number of Victorian homes there, which there aren’t, but because one of the main streets in the community is called Gingerbread Lane. The community therefore appears to be named after the beautiful Victorian Gingerbread style of construction. But I think it was named after some woman who made great gingerbread cookies on that road. That’s what people tell me.
How do you put a big brick structure in the middle of the Gingerbread Section of East Hampton, the locals want to know. It will ruin the gingerbread quality of the neighborhood.
Well, they have a point. Whatever it is. If you follow Newtown Lane up and around past the railroad station and then over toward the Montauk Highway, which is where the main flow of traffic goes, you will at one point pass this very sharp ninety degree turn to the right. It’s only one lane, each way. It’s a tricky business. And it is exactly on that sharp corner where the Bridgehampton Bank wants to put its new business. And also probably why. It will be a building that will dominate that section of town. So it’s a big deal.
As it happens, there already IS a building on this corner. It’s a sorry looking wooden structure that has little tiny rooms inside and was originally built in a quieter time as a private home. It has a little glassed-in front porch, about six feet by ten as its main feature. But nobody has lived there for many years. It HAS been used, in recent years, by a lawyer for a while and by a builder for a while, but the truth is the cars pass so close to this flimsy little building that it’s kind of scary inside, which is probably why the last family in there moved out.
At one of the meetings to discuss the bank’s design, one architectural critic for a prominent magazine got up to say that this building was the Thomas Atkins House and was a classic example of so and so design. They always use two or three names when trying to give dignity to something like this. It’s a stretch. And they say Save the Building. Make the Bank the Building.
I think in the back of the mind of any banker, particularly a Bridgehampton banker, is the image of a car or truck, one of these days, flying off the road and up into whatever it is that is on this property. If it’s made of wood, dollar bills float down from the sky for days. If it’s brick, life goes on as normal and you have to pry the vehicle out of the wall.
Call it the Three Little Pigs approach to banking. And if anybody suffers from it, it is those bankers from Bridgehampton.
So what will be the outcome of this battle? If everybody gets their way, what we will have is the Thomas Atkins House saved on the corner and attached to it a Bridgehampton Bank building made out of bricks, but covered with pre-treated, fire-proof cedar shingles. It’s a win-win or lose-lose situation all around.
As we all know, of course, there IS no actual money in these banks these days. The AMOUNT of money that has been deposited in there is noted in computers, but the actual cash that comes in — lots of people bring fistfuls of cash into banks — is taken to the underground vaults of particular billionaires in the area who wish to be able to play in their money in the same way that kids play in the autumn leaves.
So it really is safe to put your money in a wood-shingled bank.
As for the billionaires in town who suffer from this Scrooge McDuck Syndrome, as it is known, we all know who you are. And don’t worry, we won’t tell.
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