THE HAMPTONS BEACH HOUSE

The Hamptons Beach House is a house the Court takes in Southampton for the month of July, open to members for a week or a weekend: twelve places, rooms booked ahead, dinner taken together in the evening, and the beach, the boats and the rest arranged by the house.

It exists so that a member can spend a summer week in the Hamptons without owning a house there, among people worth dining with.

The Summer Colony

Southampton is the oldest English town in New York, or claims to be. Eight men, a woman and a boy from Lynn, Massachusetts, came ashore at Conscience Point in June 1640, on land had from the Shinnecock, whose name means “people of the stony shore”; the Shinnecock reservation beside the town is one of the oldest in the country.

A New York physician, Dr Theodore Gaillard Thomas, made it a resort. He built the first summer cottage on the dunes, The Dunes, in 1877, and he and his friends founded the Meadow Club, the Shinnecock golf club and the Parrish Art Museum. The railway reached the South Fork in 1870, and the Fords, the Du Ponts, the Morgans and the Woolworths followed.

The cottages they built were shingled, after the seaside houses McKim, Mead & White and others were putting up from Newport to East Hampton; some builders dipped the shingles in buttermilk so that a new house would look grey and weathered at once. Gin Lane, along the ocean, had thirty-four of them by 1927, and nineteen stand. Its name has nothing to do with the drink: it is an old English word for common grazing.

The House

Twelve places, in a shingled house in the village, for the month of July.

Members take it for a week, from Saturday to Saturday, or for a weekend, and the rooms are booked ahead.

Breakfast is laid out; lunch is taken on the beach or the boat. Dinner is at one long table in the evening, and the house invites a guest or two from the town.

Cooper’s Beach is a few minutes away, with lifeguards through the day in season. The house arranges the boats, the tennis at a club, the golf and the cars.

What Is Asked

Arrive by Saturday afternoon and leave by Saturday morning.

Dinner is at eight, and one comes to it; jackets, no tie.

Guests of members are welcome to dinner, and are announced in the morning.

The house is a house, not a hotel. Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

Twelve. It is as many as the house will sleep without crowding.

Members are written to in April, and weeks are allotted in the order replies come.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the room, the meals and the house’s arrangements.

From Manhattan, the Cannonball train on summer Fridays runs express to Westhampton and on to Southampton; the Jitney takes three hours or so, and the helicopter about half an hour. The Court’s Garden Picnics are in the same weeks.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.