Corrigan's Gas Station Has a Legacy of Racing in Bridgehampton

Looking back from today’s endless traffic jams clogging the Hamptons, it’s unnerving to watch a 20-minute film shown at the Bridgehampton Museum where cars race up and down the abandoned streets of that town at 90 miles per hour. Crowds in the film line the sidewalks to watch. In one gripping moment, a car spins out near Church Lane, sending people scattering. In another, cars come roaring up the little hump bridge in Sagaponack, go airborne as they reach the crest, then bang back down and accelerate off, having descended the other side.

There’s an explanation for all this. It is 1950 and young men, many of them sons of Bridgehampton farmers, have returned home after fighting World War II in Europe, bringing with them dozens of two-seater sports cars they got for cheap — Morgans, MGs, Austin-Healeys, Ferraris, Triumphs (back then, Europeans were desperate for dollars, the only stable currency.)

Hey. Let’s have a race.

A green flag starts it on Main Street, and the cars rumble off, kicking up dust as they turn south at the monument to race 4 more miles on back roads before returning to Main and going around again until there’s a checkered flag ending the race an hour or so later.

The prerace publicity about this event had brought national attention. Dozens of young men from around the country came bringing still more sports cars. This could turn into America’s answer to the Monaco Grand Prix, already a world-famous auto race.

A nonprofit corporation of locals had put this event together. And at the starting line, the corporation’s president spoke into a microphone. He introduced himself as Barney Corrigan, a visibly happy and affable fellow of about 50. At his request, the town board has agreed to close the streets to traffic for the day.

In 1955, just five years later, my dad brought our family out from New Jersey to Eastern Long Island where he’d bought a local pharmacy. I was 15 at the time. And though I didn’t see this film at first, I soon learned about it and Corrigan, its promoter. I’d also seen, just half a mile west of Bridgehampton at the highway’s intersection with Hayground, a big gas station with the word “Corrigan’s” painted on the façade in four-foot high letters. Cars needing repairs were lined up on the property. Many were sports cars. Others were tractors, sedans and trucks. Lots of folks had vehicles needing repair in the two mechanic bays at Corrigan’s. I figured that must have been Barney’s place.

What’s interesting is that Corrigan’s has remained in business as a gas station all these 69 years later. The sign is still there, too, although a bit weathered and fading from all those years gone by. And Corrigan is surely gone by now. But his business, a good one owned by others, remains.

One of the things that has interested me over the years is seeing new stores come in to replace the old. I remember each from then and now. And sometimes the juxtaposition is amusing. For example, one of the most desired dinner reservations today for the rich and famous is getting a table at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton. But when I look at this place, I remember it from 40 years before, when it was Ma Bergman’s, a local spaghetti house. Bergman was beloved by everybody. Wearing an apron sometimes smeared with marinara sauce, she’d come out from the kitchen to meet and greet. Her husband, a quiet fellow, took people to their seats. And her kids did their homework on the tables not in use. When she retired, she sold the building, which became Nick & Toni’s.

Also in East Hampton, where what is now Louis Vuitton, was when we first got here a shop where a woman named Hattie sewed and sold clothing and, appropriately, hats. It then became an optician’s office for many years, then a series of ever more upscale shops until two years ago when Elie Tahari sold the building to Louis Vuitton.

Meanwhile, in Montauk, what is now the Montauk Community Center was built by a resort developer in 1927 as a glass-enclosed tennis court. The story goes that during the 1940s, the military turned it into a boxing arena. After that, it was used as a barn in which to herd cattle before driving them onto railroad cars across the street to head west. Subsequently, it became a storage warehouse, a live summer stock theater called the Montauk Playhouse, a movie theater and then, most recently, the community center, affectionately still called the Playhouse.

Through it all, Corrigan’s remained. I’d drive by it and see the cars. I knew what it was before I came and enjoyed thinking about the cars racing around the streets of town until, after several years, some spectators got seriously injured from a car spinning off the road and into them. With that, the developers, headed by Corrigan, built a new racetrack north of town for future car racing, the Bridgehampton Race Circuit, and now even that’s gone. It’s currently a golf course.

Well, here is Corrigan’s place still standing, and now … uh oh, it isn’t. I just went by it.

Yes. A gas station is still there. And there are still all the cars lined up out front. But the big Corrigan’s sign has been scrubbed off. In its place, in smaller raised brass letters on the newly reshingled façade, it says “Rêver” with a circumflex over the first E. It’s French for “to dream.”

The cars lined up are different. There are no rusty pickup trucks, tractors or station wagons. Instead, it’s all vintage cars, Jags, Citroens, Lamborghinis and other sports cars, all restored and polished to the nines and selling for a hundred grand to the folks in the traffic jams creeping by at 5 miles per hour.

The gas pumps aren’t there anymore. But the repair bays remain, all clean and shiny for top-drawer repairs, I suspect.

It’s the end of an era, in my view. Cars the GIs brought home for $50 are now for sale as valuable classics, vehicles that the wealthy who shop at Prada or Loewe and eat at Sant Ambroeus might buy to breeze around the Hamptons in.

Times change. Vroom. Vroom.

To read more of Dan Rattiner’s stories, go to DansPapers.com/voices/dan-rattiners-stories.