How we make history--and what we then make of it--is engagingly dramatized in T. H. Breen's portrait of a 350-year-old American community faced with the costs of its “progress.” In the particulars of one town's struggle to check development and save its natural environment, Breen shows how our sense of history reflects our ever-changing self-perceptions and hopes for the future. Breen first went to East Hampton, the celebrated Long Island resort town, to write about the Mulford Farmstead, a picturesque saltbox dating from the 1680s. Through his research, he came across a fascinating cast of local characters, past and present, who contributed to, invented, and reinvented the town's history. Breen's work also drew him into contemporary local affairs: factionalism among residents, zoning disputes, and debates over resource management. Driving these heated issues, Breen found, were some dearly held notions about a harmonious, agrarian past that conflicted with what he had come to know about the divisiveness and opportunism of East Hampton's early days. Imagining the Past is about the interplay between some of the East Hampton histories Breen encountered: the “official” histories of many generations, the myths and oral traditions, and the curious stories that Breen, as an outsider, discerned in the town's rich holdings of artifacts and documents. With a warm yet wry regard for human nature, Breen obliges us to confront our pasts in all their complexities and ironies, no matter how unsettling or inconvenient the experience.

East Hampton began as a fishing and farming community in the 1600s, but by the late 18th century, the area had grown to be a popular summer destination. Within a year of its construction in 1796, the Montauk Lighthouse was already attracting tourists. By the mid-19th century, steamships and railroads were taking visitors to see the magnificent beaches and stay in the boardinghouses. The smaller East Hampton communities, such as Montauk, Amagansett, and Wainscott, also became favored locations for people escaping the heat of the cities, and they remain highly sought-after destinations today.

As early as 1895, seeking to avoid the summer heat of the city, well-to-do executives, heirs and heiresses of family fortunes, bankers, artists, and others began to flock to the bucolic countryside of East Hampton. This influx began its second phase of development. Behind it lay the village's colonial heritage and ahead lay the estates and condominium subdivisions of today. With over 200 photographs, mostly gathered from the Long Island Collection of the East Hampton Library, East Hampton traces the dramatic development of one of America's foremost summer colonies. This photographic account reflects its early settlers and hotels, now only a memory; its distinctive shingle-style cottages; and images of elm tree-lined Main Street. Windmills, suffrage meetings on the village green, and of course fine homes designed by the most sought-after architects are recaptured in this enchanting pictorial history.