Hamptons Heritage: White's Drug Store & the View from Montauk

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of Hamptons Heritage, a new column celebrating local history and authored by the people who know it best: Local historians. The author of the debut edition, Mia Certic, the executive director of the Montauk Historical Society.

There is nobody alive today who remembers a Montauk without White’s Drug Store. But that’s about to change. Last week, White’s closed its doors for the last time, just short of marking its 100th anniversary.

Dick White, whose father took over the business from his father during the Great Depression, says that seeing the “closed” sign on the door yesterday made for one of the saddest days of his life. Much sadder, he says, than when Dick White, Sr. sold the business to Al and Jen Rattiner back in the early 1950s. The Rattiners continued the White’s Drug Store tradition of long daily open hours, making deliveries when needed and dealing with emergencies at all times of the day and night — thus winning the affection and gratitude of the townsfolk, as had the Whites before them.

The summer after the business changed hands, Dick Jr. and Al’s son, Dan, worked side by side there, but the two didn’t necessarily hit it off at first. (“I thought it was my drugstore and Dan thought it was his,” says Dick. “I guess he was right.”) Eventually Dan turned to journalism, founding Dan’s Papers, and Dick settled into his various roles of liquor-store manager, local politician, County Parks trustee, EMT, Fire Department treasurer, and unofficial mayor of Montauk.

The drug store originally operated out of the Tudor-style Pierson building on Montauk Highway, now the location of White’s Liquors. In many ways it was the heart of Main Street, with its soda fountain, lunch counter and sundries, open seven days a week to serve the community. It had been a struggle for Dick Sr. to keep the store afloat during the Depression, which hit Montauk as it hit every city and town in America. When the 1938 Hurricane blew the side of the building off, it didn’t make things any easier. But somehow he managed to keep the doors open and grow the business until the time came to retire and sell it on.

By 1966, Montauk’s population was growing. Neighborhoods were built for newcomers down near the docks — Soundview Estates and then Culloden Shores, with its 200 or so Leisuramas — and other modern houses started popping up throughout the hamlet. Al Rattiner saw a need and an opportunity for expansion, so he built a new home for White’s on the Plaza, just a few yards away from the old one. The 5000-square-foot, mid-century modern building has become something of an icon in Montauk and is what most people think of when they think of White’s.

There’s a special role that a pharmacy plays in a small town like Montauk. It’s human — sooner or later, everybody needs its services. It’s a social leveler — is there anyone here who hasn’t rubbed shoulders with at least one celebrity, while standing in line at the counter in White’s? And it’s personal — local people know their pharmacist, and their pharmacist knows them. I will always be grateful to Frank Calvo, White’s pharmacist since 2012, for taking the time to explain the side effects of a painkiller that had been prescribed for my aged dog.

Change, of course, is inevitable. Dan Rattiner and his sister, Nancy, who inherited the White’s building, decided to sell it last year. Neither had followed their father into pharmacology, and they had been renting the building out for many years. The sale closed in January, and the drug store’s lease was not renewed when it ran out last week. Yesterday, when I parked at the Plaza to snap a quick photo, a stream of people came and went, stopping to read the “closed” sign, shaking their heads. We all knew it was going to happen, we even knew when, but somehow we couldn’t really believe it.

But while we mourn the loss of one of our oldest and most reliable local businesses, there is reason for cheer: in a couple of months, Frank Calvo will open a new pharmacy on Main Street, where he will continue to look after us with humanity and personal attention.

Am I the only one who wishes he would call it White’s?