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Bad boys and misbehaving girls get away with a lot in the Hamptons these days, but years ago it was much harder to get into trouble. The Maidstone Club, for example, did not even have a bar until Prohibition ended. Society people in East Hampton and Southampton just did not drink in public during the early part of the twentieth century, although locals and artists enjoyed hoisting a glass or two.
When the Georgica Association was formed in the late 1890s, congeniality was encouraged—within strict limits. William S. Wood, who acquired the approximate one hundred acres on the western side of Georgica Pond, sold lots to friends hand-picked from the same cultural and sociological background. Multiculturalism was unheard of, much less respectable.
But even the designated few could not be entirely trusted to always behave correctly, so strict covenants ran with the association deeds. Among the long list of “do-nots” was a restriction on saloons and beer halls—a good idea both for real estate values and moral values.
We can’t say definitively which was more important, but we suspect that even then real estate trumped everything around it, and those wealthy families who built stately and refined shingle houses on large lots close to the pond were protecting their investments. Historical preservation, like multiculturalism, was not a consideration, and the association brazenly used its money and power to ravage the old colonial roads and enhance their own seclusion.
Until then Wainscott Main Street ran right to the pond, where a wooden causeway crossed over the shallow water to the East Hampton side. That was quickly eliminated, which is why Main Street ends so abruptly with a warning not to enter the private property of the Georgica Association. Another old road, called Georgica Road, was partly erased and partly appropriated by the association. Since that was the access to the ocean for Wainscott farmers and other residents, a replacement was built, now the very posh Beach Lane, home to Toni Ross and Ronald Lauder, among other people.
It may sound imperious to us now, but—unlike drinking in places where you might be seen—such high-handed maneuvering was accepted practice at the time. It was successful and established the association’s upper crust reputation that still exists.
Attitudes and prejudices within the group were slow to change. The discriminatory pattern that was set in the nineteenth century lasted about seventy-five years, but for nearly a generation now, the Settlement, as insiders often call it, has been less exclusionary. Its purpose is not to be all-embracing, but for a group of very rich, family oriented people with a stake in maintaining the customs of their community, it is inclusive. Not everyone is old money, of course, but you’d never know it.
Simply owning there does not assure membership in the Georgica Association. Conversely, some Wainscott residents outside the association are eligible to be members. Small and large traditions—such as picnics and boat races—have endured for generations, and you still don’t see bad boys or misbehaving girls.
The Georgica Association remains an extraordinary piece of real estate, one of the most sought after, expensive and beautiful in a part of the world where addresses make a critical social difference.
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The windmill belonging to the Georgica Association has moved around more than some of the old families. It was built in Southampton—on Mill Hill—in 1813 and moved to Wainscott in 1852, where it still functioned as a mill. In 1910 it became the Wainscott public library, but somehow got back into private hands in 1922, when it was moved to Montauk and incorporated into a residence. Two decades later it was given to the Georgica Association and moved once again, presumably to stay on its present site forever.
Backgrounder on Wainscott
Beginnings: Four years after East Hampton Town was founded in 1648, the first mention of the rich soil of Wainscott occurs in official records, citing an order that ``a cartway shall be laid out to Wainscott where it may be most convenient.'' It wasn't exactly the LIE, but by 1688 John Osborn arrived, shortly joined by other settlers. Osborns have been farming Wainscott land for more than 10 generations. Wainscott is named after a village north of Maidstone, England, an area immortalized in Charles Dickens' ``Great Expectations.''
Survival: Of all surrounding hamlets, Wainscott, in the East Hampton Town's southwest corner, has probably best kept its rural charm, despite new, expensive housing that has eaten away some of the potato fields next to the ocean. The ``boom'' of the 1980s and '90s increased the year-round population by nearly a third, from 421 to 539, according to LILCO. ``Wainscott has kept a lot of the character of hundreds of years ago, even if there's been huge change along Montauk Highway,'' says Lisa Liquori, East Hampton Town planning director. The one-room schoolhouse (19 students, grades 1-3) on Main Street is one of two remaining in use on Long Island. The other is in adjacent Sagaponack.
Turning Point: The Georgica Association, a private group of the well-to-do who built handsome places on large lots at Georgica Pond, established Wainscott's reputation for style and privacy in the 1890s.