Hilda Lindley House
In 1970, Hilda Lindley founded an environmental group called the Concerned Citizens of Montauk (CCOM) to save Indian Field's unique natural and cultural history after developers proposed to build up to 1,800 houses on its 1,000 windswept, pristine acres.
After a long and bitter political fight, Lindley and the CCOM succeeded in convincing the Suffolk County Legislature to buy much of Indian Field for parkland.
[7] Montauketts continued to live, hunt, fish, and gather in Indian Field into the late 19th century, and some of the remains of their houses and root cellars there have been the subjects of archaeological digs.
Benson, who liked to hunt and fish in Montauk, soon began building houses designed by the noted architect Stanford White for rich friends to enjoy near the ocean.
If a ship or aircraft were sighted, it was the duty of the soldiers manning the fire-control station to determine coordinates of its position and direction, and relay them to the nearest battery to fire at and destroy the invader.
[14] Some fire control stations, like the Hilda Lindley House and five others built in Montauk during World War II, were disguised to look like cottages, while others were constructed as simple, reinforced dugouts or as towers.
[15] Like the other fire control stations in Montauk, the Hilda Lindley House was meant to safeguard an important shipping approach to New York and southern New England, including Narragansett Bay.
These Army lookouts, containing observation instruments and constructed mainly of reinforced concrete, were built to serve as eyes for the batteries of big guns located at Camp Hero, just west of the Montauk Lighthouse.
His plans had been ruined by hurricanes in Florida and the economic fallout of the Great Depression, leaving him bankrupt and Montauk largely the bucolic backwater and fishing village it had been for many years.
The remote house, accessible only by a mile-long dirt road, depended on a generator for intermittent electricity, mainly to run a pump that brought up water from an artesian well designed and built by the Army.
The channel would have changed the salinity and biology of Big Reed Pond, later designated a National Natural Landmark after Indian Field was saved from development by Lindley and the CCOM.
[21] Using newspaper advertisements, public meetings, and personal appeals, Hilda Lindley rallied friends and neighbors as upset about the development project as she was and formed the CCOM, which was to become the hamlet's leading environmental organization.
It was complicated by political maneuvering and by allegations of profiteering on the part of landowners on the perimeter of the proposed parkland, and by inflated appraisals of some private holdings slated for public purchase.
Although Hilda Lindley successfully spearheaded the effort to save Indian Field, she was ordered by Suffolk County to give up her house, under the threat of eminent domain.
She received support from, among others, Charles A. Lindbergh, the celebrated aviator, and William F. Buckley, the conservative columnist, who wrote an essay for Long Island's biggest newspaper, Newsday, from a libertarian standpoint berating the county for its behavior.
Finally, in February 1976, an agreement was reached, in which Lindley and her family retained the right to stay in their house for 35 years, at the end of which it was to be handed over to county government without compensation.
[29] Her family continued to live in the house in Indian Field, maintaining it and occasionally aiding lost hikers, bikers, and horse riders who sometimes became disoriented in the county park's dense underbrush, swampy thickets, and winding trails.
In August 2010, Joseph Montuori, the Suffolk County Parks Commissioner under Steve Levy, a Republican, wrote a letter to the Lindleys ordering them to leave the house by February 2011.
As of February 2015, however, the Lindley family's offer to renew the lease, maintain the house in a caretaker capacity, or reach some other agreement with Suffolk County to ensure preservation of this historic structure had not been accepted.
Vandalism and break-ins had occurred, and windows had been broken, but Suffolk County officials and employees had done little or nothing to repair the damage, protect the house, or come up with a plan for saving it, despite pleas from the Lindleys and the Montauk community.
