How Elm Street Got Its Name

Had clear heads not prevailed, train travelers descending at the Southampton depot and heading down to the beach today might find themselves not on Elm Street but on the Cross-town Road or perhaps East Lane, East Broadway or Agawam Avenue. These were among the suggestions fired off to the Sea-Side Times in the weeks following the opening in 1885 of the new road leading south from the station.

That the choice of a street name could have caused such a commotion, filling the letters columns of the local press week after week, is perhaps only understandable in light of the many changes Southampton was undergoing at the time. Well on its way to becoming a premier resort, the village seemed to many to be at risk of losing its charming quaintness.    

Among those most determined to preserve Southampton’s old-fashioned charm were members of the Southampton Village Improvement Association, organized by members of the summer colony. At its very first annual meeting in 1882, “sign boards” for the streets intended “to perpetuate the ancient names which by their quaintness recall the antiquity of the settlement” were declared a priority.

True, the temptation to enhance that quaintness proved irresistible in a few cases and some strange adjustments were made — or attempted. In her memoir, Margaret Schieffelin Trevor credits the SVIA for coming up with a new name for Town Pond — an appellation considered too prosaic and charmless for what one of her contemporaries once described as “this beautiful sheet of water whose waves are constantly cloven by a swan-like fleet of pleasure boats.” So Town Pond became and remained so, despite a later unfortunate attempt to add some sparkle to its waters by calling it .

Gin Lane — perhaps the most quaint appellation of all — posed a thornier problem since any memory of the device from which the name was derived — a snare for runaway cattle — had long since dimmed. The resulting confusion was the subject of this passage from an essay by historian William S. Pelletreau:

“Gin Lane does not derive its name from the exhilarating fluid whose baleful effects are so vividly depicted in Hogarth’s famous sketch but from a peculiar form of fence which was made there in ancient times to protect and enclose the Little Plains as the tract south of this road was called …”

What to do about such an inappropriate association with wicked gin?

George R.  Schieffelin, among others, favored East Riding “as an improvement on Gin Lane on account of the double meaning of the latter as well as because the road is no longer a snare.” So East Riding, with its somewhat obscure historical derivation commemorating a reorganization in 1665 of the Long Island domains into English-style “ridings,” was given the green light though the name never managed to gain any traction.

For the most part, however, the names that villagers had always taken for granted were praised effusively in the public discourse, which reached beyond Elm Street to address the philosophical and political significance of all street names in the village and their power to create the desired bucolic impression. In his letter of May 1885, Schieffelin had written with hearty approval of such old names as Windmill Lane, Meeting House Lane and — a  special favorite — Toylesome Lane, which he pronounced  “unrivalled in its quaint suggestiveness.”

“Call it Elm Street,” was the brusque advice of another correspondent who seems to have had the last word on naming the new road. Never mind that the leafy image evoked was still in the future. And never mind that the writer was without any “pecuniary interest in it, either present or prospective,” he was ready to pledge $25 “towards embellishing its sidewalks with horse-chestnuts, maples and elm trees” as soon as the matter was settled to his satisfaction.  

Elm Street won the day. Gin Lane survives. Toylesome Lane was never in danger. 

Sources from the Archives: Collected pages from the Sea-Side Times, 1885; David Goddard, “Old and New Southampton: The Transformation of a Long Island Community, 1875-1900,” manuscript slated for publication by State University of New York Press; Margaret Schieffelin Trevor, “Memories of a Southampton Child”; William S.  Pelletreau, 1874 essay.