Dering Harbor’s Discovery Changes Shelter Island Forever Part 2 of 9 Compiled by Patricia Shillingburg

Two Grand Hotels According to Stewart W. Herman, who has written many books on various aspects of Shelter Island:  Plans for the two undertakings [the Manhansett and Prospect houses] were virtually identical. Each envisioned a big hotel surrounded by a close-packed cottage colony in a leafy grove. Both were designed as family resorts, not simply including children, but envisioning the whole community as one big family. As the dewy-eyed promotional flyer put it, 'It is obvious that this cottage system of living in communities will enable families to secure, at moderate cost, the health and exemption from care of camp life; and unite with them the neatness and comfort of a furnished home, the refinements of carpets, pictures and flowers, and the independence and safety of home.'      The earliest private cottages were actually kitchenless in the expectation that everybody would eat in a common dining room. And, of course, the hotel would provide all the entertainment, from costume parties to church services. This, the prevalent summer-resort pattern, was followed by both the Prospect House and the Manhanset House, whose respective peninsulas shared, and were separated by, one of the finest natural harbors on the North Atlantic coast.      In addition, in 1874, Professor Horsford bought out the fish smelting plant at Dinah's Rock and transformed the beach and some of its buildings into a picnic grove with a carousel which was for many years a magnet for excursion steamers up and down the coast.      The facilities at the two hotels, which each could cater to 350 guests in residence at the beginning and over the course of time added several annexes and floors, included grand bathing pavilions and beach houses, amusement halls, ball fields, tennis courts, 50 miles of bicycle paths at the Prospect House alone, and eventually two golf courses (the Manhanset House golf course was the third to be built in the country and was completed in about 1896). Every effort was made to make the guests' time enjoyable and full of pleasing activities. The grounds were kept immaculate; luncheon and dinner always included many courses of the finest food available; music accompanied dinner, and there were dances every night. There was always a great emphasis on water sports, from swimming and diving competitions, paddling canoes, rowing skiffs, sailing to 'water sports' carnivals.   The large, sumptuous steam and eventually sailing yachts of the rich and famous filled Dering Harbor every summer. As soon as the two hotels opened for business, burgees of visiting yachts' clubs became an increasingly familiar site. Those for the prestigious New York Yacht Club were among the first.      The Shelter Island Yacht Club was founded in 1886 in The Heights and in 1892, the New York Yacht Club established Station #5 near the Manhanset House. That same year the Shelter Island Yacht Club built its own club house on Chequit Point. Thus two esteemed yachting facilities faced each other across the Harbor.       A fine history of yachting on Shelter Island can be found in Stewart W. Herman's book, The Shelter Island Yacht Club: A Centennial History, 1886-1986.  However, the fabulously wealthy men who brought their huge boats to Dering Harbor were the same men who invested in the hotels and built their summer homes around the Prospect House and the Manhanset House. The yachts of the first members of the Shelter Island Yacht Club included John Noble Stearn’s 31 foot cat boat Minnie Rogers,.and Joseph Cristoffel Hoagland’s 132 foot steam boat Lagonda. By 1892, the listed boats include  John Abel Aspinwall’s two steam yachts, the 48 foot schooner Secret and the 79 foot Thyra; Henry H. Hogan’s  65 foot schooner Fearless and as well as a 50 foot sloop Enterprise;  John Bassett Keep’s 22 foot cat boat Apajune; and Hoagland’s 187 foot steamer, Stranger. A hastily called regatta took place off The Prospect's entertainment pavilion in August of 1886.       Most of these large boats had professional captains and crew and races were not amateur. The men who started the yacht club on Shelter Island and promoted NYYC Station #5 were among the same men who founded many of the yacht clubs in the New York area, and elsewhere along the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to Virginia. Their boats were luxurious with the finest linens and china, and they expected the same amenities wherever they traveled in their yachts.     It seems that each of the committee members of the NYYC considering stations seems to have pleaded successfully for placing a station where his summer home was located!