"Philistines at the Hedgerow" is the first-ever social history of the most exclusive and unusual enclave in America. Outside of Newport, Rhode Island, I know of no other American community as embedded in history, human passion, and property as New York State's, The Hamptons.
From East Hampton to Montauk Point, Gaines takes you inside the world behind the walled estates and rolling dunes, in a magical story of money, celebrity, property, and eccentric real-life characters. Here revealed is the fame and infamy from the first settlement up to and including the 1990s. This nonfiction work reads like a novel and leaves you shaking your head in wonderment
Steven Gaines, Hampton insider and author of such works as "Obsession, a Biography of Calvin Klein," "Simply Halston," "The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles," "The Club," and "Another Runner in the Night." Gaines is a resident of Wainscott, New York, located in the Hamptons.
"As the go-go eighties stock market pushed the Dow Jones toward the 2,000 mark for the first time in history, freshly minted millionaires were being pumped out daily. They were the cream of the baby-boomer generation: spoiled young urban professionals stockbrokers, lawyers, junk-bond kings, financiers, and self-styled corporate raiders. This crop of brash "Masters of the Universe," as Thomas Wolfe called them in "Bonfire of the Vanities," was seeking not only second homes but an arena in which to compete socially. . . . The fabled beaches of the Hamptons, a society unto itself only two hours from Wall Street, seemed perfect."
Waiting to greet these "arrivistes" as they invaded the East End in numbers never before seen, was The Pasha of real estate, Allan M. Schneider. Schneider, was the most powerful broker in all the Hamptons with offices in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, and East Hampton.
Gaines says, "Schneider's agency was, like a tsunami rolling over the Hamptons' real estate market." If so, then his life style might be likened to a disastrous earthquake, or at best, a fairy tale of mythic proportions.
So many individual life-stories are given, it would be impossible to mention them all, but to overlook Robert David Lion Gardiner, the 16th Lord of the Manor, would be a crime against history.
The first Gardiner purchased an island some nine miles off the coast of East Hampton in the early 1600s it is now known as Gardiner's Island. This primeval gem, nearly 3500 acres of lush Eden with its 27 miles of pebble beaches and towering cliffs is often called, Treasure Island because Captain Kidd once buried treasure there. It is also known as "The Sandbar of Sorrow." When you read the early history, you'll know why.
Robert Gardiner has memorized his entire family genealogy, 16 generations worth, and recites it with relish, all 400 years of it. Through the Gardiner family history, readers are shown how and why the Pequot tribe was exterminated by the English, and the story of how Lion Gardiner, the First Lord of the Manor, came to be close friends with Wyandanch, the proud chief of the wealthy Montauk tribe.
Leaping from yesteryears to present time in the Hamptons is not as large a jump as one might think. Hamptonians have zealously preserved their history, and their traditions. This is why the locals view outsiders, who would change their beautiful communities, with a litigious spirit.
The artists, painters and sculptors, arrived first. Then came the Hollywood invaders, and literary giants like F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, James Jones, Truman Capote, and other "undesirables," who settled into existing estates and built new, outrageous mansions. Law suits and political intrigues sprung up like mushrooms up and down the beaches as closer and closer the Philistines edged toward the hedgerows of the "old monied" families. The horrifying outcome of this assault left me breathless. "As to why each generation of newcomers was drawn
here in the first place, there is little left to remind anyone."
"Philistines at the Hedgerow" is a must read experience. I am pleased to give it my highest recommendation.
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(Jones is a published writer & literary critic)
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