MAYOR SCHMITT TO VILLAGERS IN 1939: DON'T ABANDON US NOW

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LETTER COURTESY LARRY LYNCH, GRANDSON OF TRUSTEE JOS. A. LYNCH

Hurricane Sandy was much worse to Saltaire than the legendary Ash Wednesday Storm

It is much worse.  I was there in March 1962. So was the Beav and so were the Baums. The  worst storm in our lifetime to this end of the FI. Until now. 

             -JO'H 

The damage to the dune line  from Hurricane Sandy is just devastating - I was out to the beach immediately after the '62 Nor'easter, was on the beach the night of the '91 Halloween storm, out to Saltaire immediately after the 92 and 93 nor'easters. This is by far(on an actual and future) much much worse. The dunes are gone. Pacific Walk - from my house at 215 you can stand on the walk and watch the waves break up at the ocean - the old Baum house is on it's stilts out on the beach - Schlossers house along with every house from Pacific to West Walk could go out on the next lunar high tides and prevailing winter southeast winds. I have spent my entire life on Great South Bay, I ran ferries while in college - the current situation ain't pretty. Spoke today with Mike Mooney(son of FI Ferry owner Ed Mooney) he agreed.

Of lesser importance - many homes probably had water infestation. I know of some specifically having been able to look in windows. Most every walk was "popped" by tidal flow from east bay and ocean - with few exceptions they look like Coney Island/Great Adventure roller coasters. I would recommend that you do not go out there as trying to traverse these walks could be hazardous to your health - either that or retain a personal injury lawyer should you slip and fall(some walks have a slippery residue in them).

All in all my trip to the Asylum with my brother and John Zaccaro was a high point in my otherwise dull existence.
   -Beaver

Top: Baum House, March 1962 pic by Peter Baum

 Same House 10-31-12 pic by Beaver

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
               ---Edgar Allan Poe

below same house after 2009 beach replenishment

(village website photo)

below: same House August 5, 2012 (Pic by Poteat)

Dear All--On behalf of the Baum family, I am so sorry to learn this fate for our (former) home at 309 Pacific Walk. When my parents got married during WW II, my Mom told my Dad that her family was of old Fire Island stock and they needed to build a cottage there. So after the war was over, they visited Saltaire and picked a very ocean front lot. Village attorney Frank Goggins refused to sell the young couple the lot they chose and instead sold them 309 Pacific Walk, which he deemed a much safer location. That spot was well behind dunes that were at that time as high as the house. They built their cottage "Sea Spray" there in 1948 and thanked Frank Goggins after many a storm. But after 64 years, Hurricane Sandy has turned out to be "The Big One". Our thoughts are with all of you as deal with recovery ahead.

Warm regards,
Victoria Baum Bjorklund

The photos and the linked video on the saltaire38 site are just haunting! Flashbacks from those times run through my mind as I look at the photos and video.

    --Jean Campbell

Below:

West side near ocean

Lighthoust prom and Pacific

Schlolsser looking west

pics by the Beaver

Add caption

Lighthouse Prom at Pacific walk

That shot of the corner of Lighthouse and Pacific is so upsetting, as it was "our" corner for so many years.  The images are haunting and so sad...and I've heard the same response from my siblings, as I've forwarded this to all of them.  Jennifer Burns bought our house from my Dad in 2004, and yet Saltaire will ALWAYS be home to me...I do hope they can rebuild the beach, and that the Schlossers, the old Baum house, the Kampas, and all the other beachfront folks will be okay.  --Jean Campbell

In conversation several years ago Mrs. Virginia Baum mentioned that she had spent many  hours standing at Lighthouse Prom and Pacific talking to friends..  "We would talk, for hours." she said.  "for hours." (JO'H).

I hope this isn't too huge for recovery, yet Fire Island has been a resilient place in the past, and I hope too in the future. The Keegan house, where I spent quite a few Augusts is now a waterfront house on both sides, although it still stands. I wonder how the McManus house across from the tennis courts is faring. It's enough in the middle to give me hope. Even though it's now not in our family, I have a special place in my heart for that house--actually for so many of the Saltaire houses. How easily we'd go from one to another as kids, walking right in without the formality of knocking--makes me think of that old saying that "it takes a village to raise a child." And Saltaire, as a village, in many ways, raised me.

Seeing it so flooded, I feel its wounds from afar. --Diane McManus

The most telling photo of all

Mansions. Wonderful Houses. Our oceanfront was lined with magnificent houses around 1920. Kind of like today.

 The 1920 Houses were gone.

By 1927.

VOS Photo

Video of Fire Island post Sandy.

Saltaire overheads begin at the ten minute mark.




http://www.news12.com/articleDetail.jsp?articleId=338788&position=1&news_type=news

Hurricane of 1938 Pictures from contemporary Trustee Joseph Lynch

We are not sure exactly where on the bayfront the first picture depicts. It does not seem to be in the Boat basin by the main dock, as are most of the other surviving pictures of wreckage in the Bay. It shows a couple of houses

Any Ideas?


click to enlarge any picture. All pictures courtesy Larry Lynch unless otherwise noted

This is the boat basin with the dock on the right. Click and look closely in the back and you can see the name on the prow of the "Saltaire" ferry boat.

This Bottom Pictue is from Newsday, tracked down by Justin Zizes Jr.

"SHOCK TROOPS OF DISASTER" THUMBS UP BY HUGH O'BRIEN FOR THIS WPA FILM ABOUT THE 1938 HURRICANE

JUSTIN ZIZES JR. SCOUTED OUT THIS FILM FOR US AND IT IS A GOOD ONE.

PRODUCED BY THE WPA THIS FILM CHRONICLES THE DESTRUCTION FROM THE HURRICANE OF 1938 AND THE ARMY OF WPA AND CIVILIAN CONSERVTION CORPS WORKERS THAT HELPED REPAIR THE DESTRUCTION.

THE FILM TALKS MOSTLY ABOUT NEW ENGLAND, IT DOES HAVE SOME ACTUAL PICTURES OF SALTAIRE.

CHECK OUT THE WRECKAGE IN THE SALTAIRE BAYFRONT AND THE ELADIO AT THE TWO MINUTE MARK IN THE FILM. THIS IS A GREAT FILM TO GET A SENSE OF THE SIZE OF THE DESTRUCTION, AND YOU REALIZE THAT SALTAIRE WAS JUST SMALL CHANGE IN THE FOOTPRINT LEFT BY THIS MONSTER STORM.

YOU CAN ALSO BE DRAWN INTO POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS. YOU KNOW, WPA, CCC THEN AND HECKUVA JOBS TODAY.

THANX FOR THE REFERENCE, JUSTIN.

HERE IS THE LINK: http://www.historylite.com/media/517/New_England_Hurricane_-_1938/


HUGH O'BRIEN THUMBS IT UP:

Leave it to Justin to dig this one up....

I’ve seen excerpts from this film, never the whole thing, in various documentaries over the years. Cool to finally see it all in context.

Did you guys catch the other Saltaire footage? At about 4:56 or so into the film there’s a brief shot of people leaving the Village Hall. Unmistakable. The camera pans down the ramp following some of the evacuees (it’s shot in daylight), with Ye Olde Casinoe in the background as well as the same house that stands today at the corner of Neptune and Bay. I didn’t know they had a screen door on the VH back then. Just the ticket to protect against rising flood waters. The VH footage is fol lowed by people being loaded onto a boat to be taken back to the mainland. I assume, but can’t definitely ascertain, that that’s our dock and our forebears. The film is hard to see on the computer (and its quality is a bit deteriorated), but it would be neat if Edie Watts or Ann Keegan could check it out and maybe identify some of the survivors.

Disappointing that there’s no footage of Madame Bazinet or Mrs. Haas being excavated by the WPA. (Okay, sorry.)

For film buffs (if any), the background music heard for about 50 seconds starting at 3:42 is lifted from the soundtrack from King Kong. (In KK it’s heard from the time Kong breaks out of the theater, onto the street, and begins climbing the building where he eventually finds Fay Wray in her boudoir.) Much of the other music sounds familiar, like Kong a lot of it probably written by Max Steiner, and taken from the RKO library. One of the sadder untold stories of the Great Hurricane is how WPA spotter planes had to shoot Kong off the water tower in order to save it so we could pull it down on Labor Day 1968. The work gangs buried the carcass in front of the maintenance yard, which explains why the height of the dunes in that area has gradually been falling over the past seven decades, even as the dune grass thrives.

Anyway, thanks JZJr, and also Harry Hopkins, and thanks to our mentor, Johare ny@aol.com, for continuing the valiant work of the blogspot. Or, as the narrator of the film pronounced it, “vail-ee-yent” (he says it at the VH shot).

Let’s get to work i.d.’ing those refugees. We ain’t got all night.

Hugh

Who's Gonna Clean Up this Mess?

Photo Courtesy Frank Mina Click to enlarge

Thanks, Frank for this great shot.

Can we see the Mina/Rosenblum house in the background?