High Society Goes “Out East”
By the end of the 19th century, it was Long Island’s turn to receive high society. More than a thousand mansions were built on Long Island’s North Shore from the late 1800s to the 1930s. Aptly dubbed the Gold Coast, this gilded enclave was the summer playground for New York’s nouveau riche and old money set. The wide stretches of open farmland and protected beaches served well for their grand villas, castles and and châteaux, many of which were imported from the Old World, lock, stock, and barrel, and reconstructed “out east.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby immortalized the arriviste glitz and glamor of the North Shore summers during the Roaring Twenties. Cow Neck and Great Neck, on Manhasset Bay, were the West and East Egg of the novel, where “white palaces glittered along the water.” Jay Gatsby’s estate was merely 40 acres, while the neighboring properties of the “staid nobility of the countryside” were 10 times its size, limestone castles and palaces set like jewels in baroque gardens, with stables and paddocks, mazes, croquet lawns, tennis courts, and swimming pools. Their real-life owners were America’s wealthiest families―Astor, Vanderbilt, Phipps, du Pont, Woolworth, Guggenheim―the fortunate few, whose seasons in the sun really were as ostentatious as their fictional counterparts.
Seventy miles east, the South Fork of Long Island is a place the New York Times dubbed “Eden.” In an article from 1893, the small coastal villages of the Hamptons were described as “Exclusive—in the best sense of the word—society is here represented during the summer by its choicest spirits.”
The Hamptons comprise the seaboard towns of Southampton and East Hampton, within which are smaller hamlets, such as Bridgehampton, Westhampton, Sag Harbor, and Montauk. Back then, the journey to the Hamptons was a long, rickety train ride from New York City to Bridgehampton. An extension of the track all the way to Montauk put the Hamptons firmly on the tourist map. First came the modest summer colonies, then the golf courses and tennis clubs, and by 1910, the Hamptons had become a haven for the wealthy. The artists arrived in the ’40s and ’50s, Jackson Pollock followed by Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol; the writers Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, and then a throng of musicians and Hollywood actors.
Further development from the 1960s to the ‘80s completed the Hamptons’ transformation from an agrarian backwater into one of the world’s most coveted summer resort destinations.
The Hamptons are still the place to be every weekend from Memorial Day to Labor Day each year. The well-heeled and the well-known (and the almost-known who watch them) come for the powdery sand beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and Peconic Bay; the world-class recreation, golf, showjumping, and sailing; and, the Hamptons unrivaled social scene: haute restaurants and nightlife, art shows, charity fundraisers, and parties, lots of parties. The pilgrimage from New York City to this storied summer resort is two to three hours by car (if you leave by dawn or dusk) or train, or—the preferred way to travel—half an hour by seaplane or helicopter.
You’re Sure to Fall in Love with Old Cape Cod . . .
For Bostonian trippers, the summer destination of choice has always been the Cape. Today, the very well-heeled sail or fly across Nantucket Sound to the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. These are the quintessential New England summer resorts: quaint fishing villages, colonial towns, candy-colored lighthouses, lobster shacks, ice cream parlors, wide, sandy beaches, and tranquil “kettle” ponds ideal for bathing.
Like much of the Northeast coast, its history is tied to shipping and whaling, the fortune-building industries of the 17th and early 18th centuries. In the 19th century, the Cape’s first tourists came from Boston by stagecoach and boat. In 1848, a train took beachgoers from Boston to Sandwich, and by 1873 to the tip of the Cape, or the “end of the world” as locals called it, Provincetown, “P-town,” where the Mayflower first landed in 1620. In 1914, the Cape Cod Canal was built, connecting Cape Cod Bay to Nantucket Sound, followed by the Cape Cod Canal Bridge.
It was America’s most famous family that put Cape Cod on the map. In 1926, its patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy rented a summer cottage in Hyannis Port. He later purchased a clapboard waterfront cottage for his wife, Rose, and their growing family to spend their summers. The three-home compound on six acres would serve as the headquarters of then Sen. John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign and later as his summer White House.
Many wealthy Bostonians ventured farther afield, across Nantucket Sound, to reach the island escapes of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Centers of the whaling industry from the early 1700s to the mid-1800s, they were famously portrayed in Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick. The rise of the oil industry and the collapse of whaling devastated the islands’ economies.
Tourism beckoned. Nantucket remained isolated until the Old Colony railroad reached mainland Woods Hole in 1872, and summer residences began to appear. Largely undeveloped until the mid-20th century, Nantucket offered developers large tracts of oceanfront land. The first major tourists on Martha’s Vineyard were thousands of Methodist revivalists, who pitched their summer tent campsites—and later built cottages—in the groves and pastures of Oak Bluffs. Both these picture-postcard islands had miles of coastline with dozens of beaches, either protected by the sound or vast stretches along the Atlantic Ocean with views at sunrise or sunset.
And the whales came back. Today, Nantucket excursionists can spot humpbacks and finbacks galore, sometimes minke whales, right whales, pilot whales and, rarely, sperm whales, beluga whales, sei whales, and blues.
The Hidden Treasures of the Sound
Connecticut has a necklace of beaches on Long Island Sound in the 24 towns along its shore from New York to Rhode Island. There are prestigious commuter havens on the ocean like Greenwich (an hour and a quarter by rail from Manhattan) and Old Lyme (two hours). Old Saybrook (three hours)—just a ferry ride across the Sound from the North Fork of Long Island—has a performing arts center called “the Kate,” in honor of longtime resident Katherine Hepburn.
Gilded Age millionaires who wanted a taste of the island lifestyle bought their own private isles. Off the coast of Branford, Connecticut, are the Thimbles, a chain of 365 tiny islands (just 23 are habitable) in Long Island Sound, 90 miles from Manhattan. Dutch explorer Adriaen Block discovered the Thimble Islands during an exploration of Long Island Sound. In the late 1600s, it is alleged that the pirate Captain William Kidd buried treasure there. By the mid-1800s, word had reached New York City and New Haven, and the Thimbles tourism industry was born. Local legend asserts that for two summers President William Howard Taft had a home on the islands. Another legendary resident was showman Gen. Tom Thumb of P.T. Barnum fame.
The development of the 125 miles of New Jersey shoreline as a recreational resource began nearly two centuries ago. Cape May was the first resort. Atlantic City was the latecomer. Envisioned in the mid-19th century as a giant health spa to rival Coney Island’s popularity, it proved too popular with the masses to lure the elites of New York and Philadelphia. The most desirable stretch of the “The Shore” are the tony northern enclaves, Middletown, Rusden, and Spring Lake.
Named for the spring-fed lake at its center, Spring Lake was incorporated in 1903. But the lovely seashore town was already a popular summer sojourn for affluent residents of Manhattan and Philadelphia. Grand Italianate hotels, such as the Ocean House and The Breakers, ice cream parlors, emporiums, and the sweeping white-sand beach had been a draw since the 1870s. The Spring Lake Bath and Tennis Club was established in 1898, cementing Spring Lake’s reputation as the “Jewel of the Jersey Shore.”
The elegant north shore community of Middletown is aptly named for its scenic setting between the Navesink River and Sandy Hook Bay. The sleepy fishing village evolved into a summer enclave in the post-Civil War years, its first summer visitors arriving in steamboats from New York Harbor. Well-to-do New Yorkers gravitated to the area in the late 1800s and built their Beaux Arts-style manor houses along the banks of the Navesink River. The 1939 construction of the Oceanic Bridge, which connected Middletown and the Rumson-Red Bank peninsula, added to the area’s prosperity.
A mile west of the Jersey Shore is the coveted riverfront enclave of Rumson. The community appealed to those looking for a riverfront escape between the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers. The Sea Bright Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club, founded in 1877, and the Rumson Country Club, established circa 1908, added to the resort appeal.
By the 1850s, a number of “cottages,” hotels, and inns were constructed along the Manasquan River at or near Union Landing in Brielle. In May 1888, Robert Louis Stevenson arrived to spend a month polishing his novel The Master of Ballantrae. Fred Astaire was also a regular visitor. The Brielle Land Association was formed in 1881, 150 acres of farmland between Longstreet’s Creek for subdivision into vacation homesites. It was named after Brielle, Holland, for its resemblance to the Dutch lowlands. The 140-acre Manasquan River Golf Club was founded in 1922, and, in the post-World War II years, Brielle became an affluent residential suburb.
These beautiful shore communities are still a magnet for the wealthy. The allure is evident: proximity to Manhattan (just 45 minutes by high-speed ferry) and elegant Victorian and Edwardian estates on the Manasquan River, Debbie’s Creek, and the Glimmer Glass tidal inlet.
Like Newport, the Jersey Shore’s development of upmarket resorts began with the northern states’ post-Civil War boom: Rapid industrialization, a growing workforce, and breakneck economic expansion left the North awash in liquidity—and speculation. Unlike Newport, the Cape and its islands, “The Shore” suffered harshly in the 19th-century’s boom-and-bust expansion, its fortunes punctuated by great hotel fires and hurricane devastation. Not until the mid-20th century’s preservationist movement, with landmarking and historic district status, were the crown jewel resorts of the Jersey Shore truly saved.
And, yes, all up and down the Northeast coastline, the whales are back, too.
