Keeping Out the Gays: The Pines in the late 1950s
A 1958 “card” version of the Family Community Sign that was handed out to people arriving to the Pines
In 1953, the Fire Island Pines Property Owners Association (FIPPOA) was founded by a group of twenty-five homeowners in the new village of Fire Island Pines. FIPPOA’s purpose was to work on issues of common concern: beach preservation, sanitation, trash collection, water, fire protection, policing, harbor and marina development, ferry service, and providing a community house for public gatherings. By late 1955, there were 199 houses, and 140 dues-paying members of FIPPOA. The new property owners were almost entirely straight families from Long Island and New York City.
By 1956, the new community, with its large lots, rolling dunes, opportunity to build homes, and growing business district was attracting a new group of people: gays and lesbians from Cherry Grove, the well-established and heavily LGBT community a mile down the beach.
Many of the pioneering straight Pines property owners were not happy with these potential new neighbors and they expressed that unhappiness through FIPPOA, whose records (The FIPPOA Papers) show a major effort between 1956 and 1959 to keep out the gays and lesbians.
The FIPPOA Papers contain written correspondence and minutes that reflect tremendous animosity toward “the abnormals…the undesirables…the sterile society…people who would bring unfavorable publicity… exhibitionists…sick people,” and showed a fierce drive to prevent these “Cherry Grove types” from purchasing or renting in the Pines.
Straight Pines homeowners demanded that the real estate agents refrain from showing property to such people, badgered the Home Guardian Company (the original Pines developer) to keep out these “undesirables,” and demanded that FIPPOA take action. In 1958, FIPPOA put up a large sign at the harbor, reading “Welcome to Fire Island Pines / A Family Community,” and listing the several things the FIPPOA objected to: “riotous parties… bikini-type bathing apparel…exhibitionism.” The sign stated that The Fire Island Pines Property Owners Association wanted to have “a community that is clean both morally and physically…uphold(ing) common standards of decency in personal conduct.”
At one point, FIPPOA created a questionnaire seeking to pry into the personal lives of each new potential owner or renter, asking about their religion, their politics, their families, and even asking prospective buyers or renters for the contact information of their employers (which of course was a veiled threat of exposure). It is unclear whether the questionnaire was ever used, although there is much discussion of it in the FIPPOA Papers. In fact, a thousand postcard-size versions of the sign were printed, to be handed out to people arriving in the Pines.
In 1958, one straight woman who had moved to the Pines from the Grove wrote to the FIPPOA Board: “homosexuality dominates every thought and action and pervades the atmosphere like a fog. The mere presence of these sick people putrefies this great outdoor beach.” Shortly afterward, she was appointed to the Board when a vacancy occurred. She continued to spew venom until she left the Board and the Pines a few years later.
Although the real estate salespeople had assured FIPPOA that they would not show to “the Cherry Grove types,” they did anyway. And despite the animosity on the part of FIPPOA acting on behalf of some of the early Pines property owners, gays and lesbians kept coming, buying, renting, building, and sharing their homes with friends.
Then, a cathartic moment: on May 31, 1959, Memorial Day, a fire in the commercial district destroyed the hotel, bar, restaurant, and gift shop. Pines residents were unprepared: they hadn’t yet organized a fire-fighting force. They fought the fire alone as best they could until the Sayville Volunteer Fire Department came across the Bay, and the Cherry Grove Volunteer Fire Department came down the beach. The “Cherry Grove types” had come to the Pines’ rescue.
The Botel Fire in 1959 was a pivotal turning point for the Pines when “Cherry Grove people” came to the community’s rescue
On June 2, 1959, a letter was sent from FIPPOA to the volunteer fire departments of Cherry Grove and Sayville, thanking them for their assistance and noting that without their coming to fight the fire, the destruction, though substantial, might have been even worse.
This is a turning point in Pines history: in one terrible night, the people at Cherry Grove went from being “undesirables” to being good neighbors. From that day on, there is not another anti-LGBTQ, anti-Cherry Grove, anti-outsider reference in the FIPPOA Papers.
Over the coming years, reflecting changes in both straight attitudes and the Pines population, gay and lesbian property owners began to be elected to the FIPPOA Board. Of the twenty Board members, there were two in 1960, three in 1962, seven in 1968, ten in 1974, twelve in 1982, sixteen in 1994, and eighteen in 2002.
The author, Gary Clinton, and his husband Don Millinger first visited the Pines in 1974. They were occasional houseguests until 1980, renters from 1980 to 1997, and bought their home on Tarpon Walk in 1997. Gary has been on the FIPPOA Board for twenty of the past twenty-five years. Since early 2023 he and his Board colleague Russell Saray have been organizing, digitizing, and researching FIPPOA’s records, which they have dubbed “The FIPPOA Papers.” An “Introduction and User’s Guide to the FIPPOA Papers” will be on the FIPPOA website in Summer 2025.
Arden Catlin with community sign, circa 1958