SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Gardiner's Island LI's Ecological And Historical Jewel

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman 

I’ve been to many beautiful islands—Bora Bora, Mykonos, Nantucket, Cuttyhunk, Tahiti,  Virgin Gorda, Tobago. But just off Long Island’s shores is a gem, splendorous, an exquisite island that excels any. Gardiner’s Island is an ecological and historical jewel. 

But what will its future be? 

The 3,300 acre island is home to hundreds of bird species, freshwater ponds, lagoons, and a 1,000-acre white oak forest, Bostwick Woods, the largest stand of White Oak in the Northeast. It is the oldest English settlement in New York.

I first went to Gardiner’s Island nearly 50 years ago. Robert David Lion Gardiner, who described himself as the “16^th Lord of the Manor” of the island, for nearly 400 years privately held by his family, welcomed a large camp-out of Boy Scouts on it in 1971. I visited, interviewed Mr. Gardiner on the island, and wrote about the camp-out.

The next year, 1972, I got to know Mr. Gardiner pretty well—when he ran for Congress in the lst C.D. on the Conservative Party ticket against incumbent Otis Pike of Riverhead as a protest to Pike’s effort for federal acquisition of the island. 

Gardiner was no Conservative. Indeed, he ran for the State Senate in 1960 as a Democrat. It was quite a scene when he ran—this kind of an American aristocrat. As Mr. Gardiner told American Heritage magazine in 1975: “The DuPonts, Rockefellers and Fords, they are nouveaux riche. The DuPonts came in 1800; they’re not even a colonial family.”

Gardiner lost, of course, but there was also a letter-writing campaign—80,000 letters opposing Pike’s bill were sent to the House Committee on the Interior—and Pike withdrew it.

Mr. Gardiner was subsequently a guest on my weekly TV show, “Long Island World,” on WLIW/21, the Long Island PBS station. And I did more interviews with him for print. 

Meanwhile, in 1974, thinking about the eastward move of development in Suffolk, I embarked on a TV documentary with my crew from WLIW titled “Can Suffolk Be Saved?”

It was ten half-hour programs broadcast on WLIW and WPIX/11 in New York City. 

I started the series on Gardiner’s Island describing it in a “stand-up” as a “time capsule.” I ask whether Suffolk can avoid being swallowed in the swath of sprawl from Boston running through New York down to Washington. Then Mr. Gardiner speaks of the island as a “paradise” and gave a tour. The Gardiner’s Island segment can be seen on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiayfbQKOTY

Lion Gardiner acquired the island from the Montaukett Indians in 1639. Among its structures is a windmill, brilliant white, constructed in 1795 by Nathaniel Dominy 5th of East Hampton that’s on the National Historic Register. There’s a carpenter’s shed, built in 1639, the oldest surviving wood-frame structure in New York State. 

In the tour, Mr. Gardiner—standing in a truck bed—told of how Captain Kidd came to the island in 1699 and buried treasure. Kidd then headed off to Boston where he was captured, tried for piracy and executed. The Gardiners were ordered to return the treasure. He spoke about Julia Gardiner, born on the island, who became President John Tyler’s wife in 1844.

Subsequently, a feud developed between Mr. Gardiner and his niece, Alexandra Creel Goelet, who stood to inherit the half-share of the island held by Gardiner’s sister, Alexandra Gardiner Creel. It went on for years. Gardiner accused his niece and her husband, Robert Goulet, of planning to sell the island for development. He switched and said he was not opposed to ownership of the island by government or a private conservation group. Mrs. Creel’s ownership went to her daughter when she died in 1990. Mr. Gardiner died in 2004.

A few months later, the Goelets arranged with the Town of East Hampton for a 20-year conservation easement covering more than 95% of the island. It was contingent on a promise from the town that it would not further upzone the island, change its assessment, or attempt to acquire it by condemnation.

Earlier, in 2001, Lee Koppelman, long-time Suffolk County planner, recommended that “development rights” for the island be purchased or it becoming a limited access national park or national wildlife refuge. He described Gardiner’s Island as “perhaps the most important offshore island on the entire Atlantic seashore from Maine to Florida….The overriding concern is for the long term future.” Dr. Koppelman in 2004 commented that the Goelets “cannot perceive what their children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren will decide to do. And what if the line itself passes from history, as many families do?”

Mrs. Goelet is an environmentalist. She has a master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry. Mr. Goelet is former chairman of the American Museum of Natural History. The Goelet family has enormous wealth.  

The Goelets have been, as was Mr. Gardiner, excellent stewards of Gardiner’s Island. But the conservation easement expires in a few short years. Will unique and wonderful Gardiner’s Island in future years, in the long term, in 50, 100, 200, another 400 years, be saved?

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.