East Hampton Post Office Became the First Store Too Expensive for Locals

About halfway up Newtown Lane in East Hampton on the eastern side there sits a store whose history tells of changes in the downtown better than any other. It doesn’t have big show windows. It’s in an English style, a sort of stucco and half timber affair. I don’t know when it was built, exactly, but I do know that when I got here all those years ago as a teenager in 1956 it was the town post office. Across the street was East Hampton Hardware (now Oliver Peoples) and down the block toward Main Street there were other ordinary stores and restaurants – Speeds Luncheonette, the Village Shoe Store, Lyons Chinese Takeout and, could it be? Yes. The East Hampton Police Station (today a high fashion clothing store).

There was, believe it or not, a gas pump on the sidewalk directly in front of the police station. Cars, what few there were, could pull over and have an attendant fill-her-up. And on the corner with Main Street? Not Louis Vuitton. Bob Otto’s Optomotrist store. Which had recently replaced a dress shop where a woman named Hattie Goldfarb made clothing and hats.

But let us return to the Post Office. There was talk in the late 1950s about building a new Post Office just to the east of town. It finally got done around 1960 and the Old Post Office lay vacant after all the workers moved to Gay Lane, next door to what today is the CVS downtown pharmacy.

What should become of the post office? It became, around 1965, a movie theater for independent films. The main movie theater, a much larger facility, was around the corner on Main Street. This was different. Dark and dingy, one sat uncomfortably in a small space facing a movie screen where the customer’s counter once was. It was called the Old Post Office Theater. And it remained a movie theater for about five years, then went once again dark and out of business.

About 1975, however, it reopened as a small specialty food store. Called Dean and DeLuca, it was the first ever store in East Hampton to serve the new wealthy clientele now moving into and taking over that town.

I remember the first time I went into Dean and DeLuca. At first glance, it looked like any other food store, where canned goods and sandwiches would be available for $2 or $3. Waiting in line I picked up a jar of jam. It was from Bulgaria and its tag said it was $16.59. I was so startled I almost dropped it. A local could not shop here. One or two things in a bag and they’d be out of money.

Dean and DeLuca remained at that location for the next 10 years as the stores in town all began to sell things out of reach of normal people. Pocketbooks, fashions, coats and high shiny boots. Newtown Lane, and then Main Street, lost almost all its small town stores as it transformed into an east coast version of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Gone were the Five and Ten, gone was Marley’s Stationary Store. Gone was Bob Otto and Schwenck Fuel. The VFW became London Jewelers. And gone, long gone, was the police station with the pumps out front. (I’ll tell you about the afternoon I spent in the Village Lockup another time.)

But in 1985 Dean and de Luca closed and in moved one of this community’s outstanding food stores – Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa.

Today, the name of the little alley that takes you into the parking lot behind the stores on Newtown Lane is Ina Garten Way. It’s on the street sign. The celebrated food writer and cookbook author opened her second food store in America, right where the Post Office used to be. The first store? Westhampton Beach.

Have a East End real estate story? Want to share? Text us at 516-527-3566. We’ll call you back, and then write it up for this weekly column. –Dan