After the mansion fell victim to beach erosion, the windmill was purchased and moved by artist and photographer Peter Beard to his property in Montauk.
[1] The Sandpiper Hill Windmill, a Gilded Age house designed by architect Richard Webb for Walter McCaffray, an affluent stock exchange member, was an ornamental, non-functional structure.
The interior featured unique design elements such as a powder room lined with hand-blown pink-glass mirrors and a top-floor library rich with books on Montauk history, indicating the McCaffrays' cultural interests.
This history paints a vivid picture of the estate's cultural significance, its personal connections to broader historical events, and the dramatic tales that surround it.
During World War II, in June 1943, Edgar Grimes witnessed the distant glow of naval warfare, as German U-boats attacked Allied ships off the coast.
Despite the financial ruin Fisher faced due to the Great Depression, he persisted in drawing his affluent acquaintances to Montauk even after the 1929 stock market collapse.
His efforts, though costly to him personally, succeeded in drawing numerous business magnates to the area for summer retreats and the construction of fishing lodges along the scenic cliffs.
In 1972, renowned photographer Peter Beard bought land for a ranch in Montauk, New York, and acquired the windmill from the Sandpiper Hill House in Ditch Plains.
His photography subjects on this estate included notables such as Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, and Jackie Onassis, whom he captured with his camera skinny dipping.
Kevin McCann, a filmmaker, described Thunderbolt Ranch as being unconventional, not focused on rearing livestock but rather famous for assembling a diverse mix of 'human stock'—a social tapestry of notable figures from the celebrity world.
This included luminaries from entertainment as well as other distinguished personalities from various sectors such as science, politics, academia, business, culinary arts, and acquaintances he made throughout his journey.
[8] On July 27, 1977, the Montauk mill and Thunderbolt was destroyed by fire, resulting in the loss of two decades' worth of diaries, original artworks (including pieces by Lindner, Warhol, Picasso, among others), as well as first editions of African literature and other rare publications.
[9] Beard's initial residence, situated at the very tip of Long Island's South Fork, was engulfed by flames, caused by a malfunctioning Oil-Burning furnace.
Also lost were his elaborate, baroque-style diaries, where Beard had meticulously assembled a collage of photographs, newspaper clippings, comic strips, leaves, matchbooks, naive sketches, doodles, and even cigarette butts.
These items were interwoven with scribbled phone numbers, to-do lists, budding manifestos, poems, and spontaneous mantras, all penned in an ornate script reminiscent of the one used in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness.
Subsequently, it shifts attention to the period Mr. McCann spent at Thunderbolt Ranch, the moniker Beard assigned to his estate after a lightning strike ignited a fire in the windmill during refurbishment.
He remembered gathering extensive historical records of Montauk's formative years and being the sole individual to have photographed each page of the densely annotated albums often termed as Beard's diaries.