Dan's Papers - June 12, 2009 - HISTORIC NAPEAGUE CHIMNEY MAY BE TAKEN DOWN

It's just a chimney. There's nothing particularly special about it. It's made of bricks, stands about 40-feet high right at the beach, on a strip of sand facing out to the bay between Amagansett and Montauk at a place they used to call Promised Land.

The chimney is no longer attached to anything. It was at one time, of course, because there had to be something, probably a factory, that created smoke that the owners wanted emitted into the atmosphere high enough up so the workers and managers would not be coughing and spitting over it.

The question is, today, should this chimney be saved? There is a woman who owns this property now and she wants to build a house on this four-acre parcel facing the water - there is no home there now - and she wants to take the chimney down because it would block her view. The Town is considering it.

There is some argument that the chimney should be saved because from time to time, sailboats and motorboats reckon by it. There is nothing anywhere near to it this high. They reckon to radio towers, to lighthouses, to whatever they can find. One chimney, more or less, is probably not a substantial enough reason for this chimney not to be taken down.

But then there is the history. It is quite remarkable, and it raises the question about whether something perfectly ordinary should be saved because of the history that swirled around it, which defined it, and which, during its time, resulted in this place being called Promised Land. It surely is worth considering.

Prior to 1880, there was nothing at all in the land between Amagansett, which the Indians called Napeague and Montauk. It was all dunes, beach grass, sea shells and beaches, from the ocean on the south to the arc of Gardiner's Bay on the north.

In 1881, the railroad came through. And that sparked a couple of industrialists who owned factories near New York City to consider building one on the banks of the bay. At the time, glue was often made from fish. You'd put tiny fish known as bunker in a giant pot with some water, heat it up, stir it up, and make it into what it turns out is a very good glue. You could let it cool, bottle it, label it and sell it.

It was a terribly awful, smelly business making this glue. Glue factories stank. In the populous areas near New York City, the stench often brought complaints from local residents. It would be better to build a glue factory in a remote area. Indeed, why not build the factories right where the commercial fishing boats bring in the bunker fish? It could be packed in barrels there. And the barrels could be brought in by railroad. Then the factories in Queens and Brooklyn would only have to bottle it, label it and box it up. No smell.

In its heyday, between 1883 and 1950, six glue factories stood on the arc of Gardiner's Bay in Napeague, a railroad spur leading out to all five of them there in a row, and with smoke billowing out of tall smokestacks and into the atmosphere.

It was not the smoke that smelled. The smoke came from coal brought in to these factories both by freighters tying up at the five boat docks, or by railroad cars that came down the spur. The coal was used to build a fire, and enormous iron pots, 10 feet across, were on metal stands above the fire where, inside, a combination of water and dead fish were heated to a bubbly boil and stirred by workmen using giant wooden paddles. That is what stank. It stank for two miles, and, when the wind was strong, sometimes more. It was impossible to live near these factories.

The fishermen, who dragged for these bait fish with close knitted nets hanging from fishing boat booms, would come up to the various docks and unload as quickly as possible, then head back out. Mostly, they were based in Montauk and were operated by Canadian fishermen from Newfoundland who had built a shanty town on the arc of Fort Pond Bay in Montauk six miles away (beyond the smell).

The pots were bubbling 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from May until September, and the workmen there were brought in from Portugal. They lived, worked and slept near these giant pots. And in the fall, their pockets filled with money, they made their way on freighters or steamships back to Lisbon.

Attempts were made to live near these glue factories. People came, made a decision to build there, usually on a nice day when the wind was from the southwest, but then abandoned their homes when the wind came, as it did once in a while, from the east.

Perhaps the largest homes ever built near the factories were those of two industrialists from Detroit, who came out through Amagansett to Montauk to go hunting with the owner of the vast acreage of Montauk, Arthur Benson, another industrialist. They loved their weekend at Montauk. On the way back to the city - they had come out here in a private car - they became enamored with the brow of a hill that overlooks the fish factories on the Amagansett side. The bay was on one side, the ocean on the other. There would be wonderful sunrises seen from there, rising over the Montauk Lighthouse, 16 miles to the east.

The story goes that these two industrialists, Richard Levering and Frank Wiborg, bought the brow of the hill after they returned to Detroit. They didn't know about the smell during the short time they were there. And so, from afar, they ordered two mansions be built on the top of that hill, which are still there on Cranberry Hole Road, facing out to Napeague. They built a dock down on the bay near the factories, and by this dock they built a small power station - this was around 1900 and there was no electric power there then - and they hired a man to run it. They also built a narrow gauge railway to take guests and supplies from the dock and up the hill to the houses. They would come to their vacation home by steamboat.

And they did. Once. The stench was overwhelming.

The United States Congress became involved in this soon thereafter. A lawsuit had been filed to get these factories out. But the lawsuit foundered. And in the end, the Congress passed a law promising that all this property could be used by the fish factory owners from then and forever more. It was the "Promised Land."

By 1950, fish was no longer the favored ingredient in the making of glue. The work at the fish factories declined. And by 1958, the last of the factories, Smith Meal, closed its doors for the last time. And the smell was gone.

I am probably one of the few people around today who remembers this horrendous smell. We moved out here in 1956, when I was 16 years old, and I recall on several occasions, particularly when a fog would settle in over Napeague, that my father would drive our convertible down the hill leading from Amagansett to Napeague, and then we'd hold our breaths for as long as we could, as we headed through, at 60 miles an hour, the five-mile stretch of Napeague and its awful stench coming from the fish factories at Promised Land. It wasn't all the time that we did this. It was just maybe one time in five. Four out of five, the wind was in its prevailing direction, which was the other way. But that one in five, well, I can still conjure up the smell of those factories today. And I think, thank God it's gone.

All the fish factories have been torn down since then, except one. The most easterly of these factories still stands. It is abandoned, of course, but a part of it, right off Cranberry Hole Road, has now gone back into business as a fish farm and a restaurant! It's open year round, and on warm days this time of year, you can sit outside on picnic tables right by the beach and eat fried or broiled fish, lobster and chicken and corn. It's called Fish Farm MultiAquaculture Systems, and its phone number is 631-267-3341. You can order over the phone, or just go there and pick up fish, lobsters and fish to either eat there or to take out.

As for the section called Promised Land, with the fish factories not there, it actually moved. It now refers to the small fishermen's homes that are on Promised Land Road, about a mile to the west and north - still in Napeague - but not where the factories were.

As for the smokestack, four miles to the west, this is the smokestack that was once part of the powerhouse and private railroad for the industrialists from Detroit who built those big homes on the brow of the hill. Save it or not?