PHILISTINES AT THE HEDGEROW
Passion and Property in the Hamptons
By Steven Gaines
What first attracted me to this book was that The New Yorker compared it to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. I enjoyed the latter butthe former is far more entertaining and relevant. The history of the Hamptons is comprised of successive waves of invaders, starting with the landing of the Mayflower (to be a true Hamptonite you must be descended from the original English settlers). The invaders that followed were of course undesirable. They brought disorder and chaos with them, but the worst thing they brought was bad taste. Bad taste in social relationships, architecture and ways of living.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Hamptons gave shelter to many of the twentieth century’s most important artists, from Willem de Kooning to Jackson Pollock. He and his wife, Lee Krasner, rented a small house without electricity or heat of any kind, at which they were obliged to use the outhouse. At one point Pollock gave a small painting to the owner of a grocery store in order to pay off a sixty dollar debt. The storeowner hung it behind the counter and told customers that it was an aerial photo of Siberia. Ten years later the man sold the painting for seventeen thousand, and by 1998, the painting was worth one million dollars.
Perhaps the most fascinating person mentioned in Philistines is Alan Schneider, the real estate agent. After visiting the Hamptons for a weekend, he moved there, having seen the enormous potential for profit in Hamptons real estate.
Schneider, like all successful salesmen, was charismatic and articulate. Among his clients were Stephen Spielberg and Calvin Klein, both of whom bought multi-million dollar homes through him. He made the real estate business in the Hamptons a serious affair. After he died, his friends and family discovered he had no cash and had lived his entire life in debt; he didn’t even own the spectacular house he lived in. He had juggled debts against each other. When his parents came to see his property they could hardly believe it was his. They revealed that Alan was Jewish.
Perhaps the most spectacular house in the Hamptons is The Creeks, which was owned for a time by Alfonso Ossorio, who like most great artists, never had his work seriously recognized until after he’d died. He lived with his lover, the dancer Ted Dragon, who, despite the fact that he had no formal training in ballet, was continually invited to Europe to dance with important dance troupes. The Creeks mansion, in the hands of these two men, eventually became a work of art unto itself. When a spate of robberies struck the Hamptons, in which the thieves only took valuable furniture and sculptures, no one suspected Dragon, the actual perpetrator. He loved antiques so much it pained him to think of them abandoned throughout the year. He took it upon himself to rescue it, and refurbish it, so that when it was finally returned to its owners, no one pressed charges because they were so happy to have their antiques returned in better condition than they’d left them.
John F. Kennedy Jr. was refused entrance to a restaurant at the Hamptons, after which the restaurant kept a pair of long pants so that the incident would never be repeated. His father was snubbed when he fell in love with an eligible bachelorette from the Hamptons, simply because the family judged him too ‘Irish.’ This turned into a stroke of good fortune for Jacqueline Bouvier, whose family had a long history in the Hamptons.
One of the most notorious incidents to ever take place in the Hamptons was the coming-out party of an heiress, Fernanda Wannamaker Wetherill. The party took place at her father’s thirty-five acre estate. Her father rented the Ocean Castle estate for the night, so it could be used as a dormitory for his more than eight hundred guests. This party would have put any contemporary rave to shame. It lasted all night and, when the youngsters decided to go to bed, they ended up dancing on the tables at Ocean Castle. Eventually, because they were all so drunk, they completely trashed the place, throwing stones through its windows, ripping down curtains, and smashing priceless furniture.
Near the end of the book we find that Faye Dunaway also bought a house in the Hamptons. Even after a teary performance before a local zoning board, she was denied the right to build a pool for her son to swim in. To her credit, she refused the offer of membership to the very old very and very elite Maidstone Club, with its salt-water pool that was emptied-out and refilled every Sunday. Up to that point the club had consistently refused admission to Jews, people of colour (including Diana Ross), and homosexuals. Dunaway sold her house and moved away.
Philistines at the Hedgerow is a well-researched expose of the Hamptons, one the most exclusive enclaves in North America, one that makes for fascinating reading.