A Modern Face Graces Hither Hills Cottage

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

The "cottage" at Hither Hills as it looks today, in all its modernist glory (Newsday Photo / Daniel Goodrich)

HITHER HILLS State Park opened in 1929 and the first superintendent moved into a stone cottage built at the eastern end of the Montauk park. But it didn't end the controversy swirling around the tip of the South Fork. Superdeveloper Carl G. Fisher had a grandiose scheme for turning Montauk Point into the Miami Beach of the North, with huge hotels, casinos, yacht clubs, golf courses and polo fields. In 1924 he was buying up the Montauk peninsula, even obtaining an option on the rolling hills that were to become known as Hither Hills park.

But Fisher met his match in Robert Moses, the young Long Island state park commissioner, who appropriated the land before Fisher's option could be exercised. Lawsuits continued for the next 10 years before the courts ruled in favor of the state.

The stone cottage shown in the circa 1930 picture seen at top continued to be home to a succession of park superintendents for almost 70 years, undergoing expansions and renovations. The first superintendent probably wouldn't recognize the modernist structure it has become, shown above.

The house was decommissioned in 1998 and rented to a private family. Park superintendent Tom Dess resides in Montauk Point; from there he supervises all the Montauk state parks, including Hither Hills, Montauk Point and Montauk Downs.