Shelter Island, N.Y.: A Paradise That Has Its Challenges
Featuring Seth Madore and Gary DePersia’s listing at 7 Apple Orchard Lane, Shelter Island
Gary Gerth, 74, the recently elected town supervisor of Shelter Island, described this sylvan knob of land tucked in the crook of the East End of Long Island as “an emerald jewel set in the bracelet of turquoise waters.”
“It’s not for everyone,” he added.
Georgiana Ketcham, 82, discovered Shelter Island more than 50 years ago, after her husband inherited a boat and the couple combed the Long Island coast between Amityville and Montauk, looking for a place for a summer home. Ten years later, they moved there permanently.
“I’m the oldest living real estate broker on Shelter Island,” Ms. Ketcham said. So she knows what she is talking about when she tells you it “isn’t for everybody.”
Shelter Island is a qualified paradise because of challenges that are the flip side of its charms. The four-by-five mile chunk of Suffolk County, shaped like a disastrous experiment in pancake making, is reached somewhat inconveniently by ferry, but residents say their cares drift away as they cross the waters from the North or South Fork. The island has clams, osprey and golden forsythia foaming like champagne in the spring, but lacks a hospital, a movie theater and home mail delivery. The police mostly deal with small stuff like returning lost wallets or field calls about felled power lines, but if you are caught speeding, your name will be in the local newspaper.
“My mother can’t wrap her head around the fact that there’s no shopping,” said Annemarie Norris, 41, who in 2015 bought a four-bedroom house with her husband, Benedict, for $775,000 in the Silver Beach neighborhood.
Which is to say, Shelter Island has a pharmacy, a bookstore, two hardware stores and a grocery store, but nothing remotely resembling a mall. “We sit around the firepit,” Ms. Norris said. “Or we sit on the back porch. Or we walk around the corner. Or we sit on the beach.”
With a population of 2,400 that explodes to five times that number in the summer, the island has two kinds of residents.
The Norrises are part-timers. They live in a two-bedroom Brooklyn co-op with their two young sons and spend weekends in their brick-and-shingle house on Brander Parkway. They even enjoy coming out in winter, when the island is low-key and windswept, and only a few restaurants are open. (A favorite, the Tavern at the Shelter Island House hotel, has recently changed hands and is turning Italian; it reopens as Caci this month.)
By contrast, John Kaasik, 62, grew up on Shelter Island and returned after spending much of his 20s in Europe.
“I stayed here against the better wishes of my wallet,” he said, referring to the island’s narrow, service-oriented economy, which encourages multitasking. He and his wife, Anu, own the Azalea House bed-and-breakfast and the Go’fors taxi company and stage the annual high school musical. Mr. Kaasik is also a playwright.
The permanent population, with its many retirees, is its own clan, residents say. Shelter Island’s churches, school, library and fire department are all volunteer strongholds that keep people active throughout the seasons and raise the quality of services.
But the twain do meet at the island’s golf courses, tennis courts, sailing school and beaches. And at Sylvester Manor, a plantation that was run with slave labor into the 19th century and is now an organic farm with cultural events and educational programs; at the farmers’ market on the grounds of the historical society, which is being expanded; and at concerts at the Perlman Music Center, a summer institute for young string players founded by Toby Perlman, the wife of Itzhak Perlman (he leads the faculty).
And there are clashes. As Shelter Island attracts wealthy buyers sidestepping the snoot and traffic of the Hamptons, prices are rising and the character is changing.
“I wouldn’t want it to feel like some sort of gated community in a retirement village in Florida,” Mr. Kaasik said. “I can’t say it’s the case now, but it’s trending toward that.”
In August, six residents filed a lawsuit to reverse a rule forbidding short-term rentals. Though the law was enacted to reduce disruptions caused by raucous visitors, the plaintiffs argue that renting gives vital income to homeowners who need help paying mortgages or taxes.
Mr. Gerth, the town supervisor, is on their side. Renting for any length of time, he said, brings in tourists, and tourists are often converted into residents. Besides, he added, “Renting is a tradition here.”
What You’ll Find
Shelter Island has a variety of topographies and housing styles and one great common theme: water. There are four marinas, as many public beaches and an assortment of ponds, bays and creeks.
The Mashomack Preserve, more than 2,000 acres of protected oak and beech forests, meadows, salt marshes and pine swamps, takes up a third of the island. The habitable remainder contains neighborhoods with different aqueous bodies and wealth indexes.
Shelter Island Heights, for instance, the neighborhood near the North Ferry terminal, has frilly Victorians sunning themselves on hillsides overlooking the harbor and yacht club. These houses are kept close to the bosoms of multigenerational families and come on the market only once in a while. The cluster of nearby businesses includes Stars Café on Grand Avenue and Marie Eiffel’s organic market on North Ferry Road.
Another attraction is the Chequit on Grand Avenue. Built in 1872 as a Methodist retreat, the 37-room hotel was recently renovated and is now for sale with its restaurant for $9 million.
Dering Harbor, to the east, has the distinction of being an autonomous village with the smallest population in New York State (11, according to the 2010 census). This status gives the village its own mayor, water supply and an architectural review board that has been criticized for being arbitrary, if not spiteful
Hay Beach, to the north, is a 1960s subdivision with minimum one-acre lots. Little Ram Island and Ram Island are narrow spits connected by causeways to the east, where almost all of the houses are on the water or have ocean access or views. Silver Beach, to the southwest, is a former postwar summer community on a peninsula where modest homes are routinely replaced with fancier ones. Nostrand Parkway and Westmoreland Farm are both elite enclaves to the west.
The center of the island is where Ms. Ketcham lives on two acres, near Gary Paul Gates, the journalist and author, and Eric Demarchelier, the restaurateur and artist (and the brother of the fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier). “If Shelter Island were a target and you threw darts at it, my house would be in the bull’s-eye,” she said.
Asked whether the island has changed in the 40 years he has known it, Mr. Demarchelier, who owns an 1860s clapboard house on a former lima bean farm, said, “Not much. The houses have gotten a little bigger, but there are still no traffic lights and no traffic jams.”
What You’ll Pay
Deborah Von Brook-Binder, who sells real estate for Daniel Gale Sotheby’s on Shelter Island, said the market for the first quarter of this year was slower than last year. The new laws affecting property taxes and mortgage interest rate deductions might be discouraging buyers, she added. “Also, the weather hasn’t been that great.”
According to the real estate website Trulia, the median sales price of Shelter Island homes as of March 18 was $837,500, a year-on-year increase of 5.3 percent based on 116 transactions.
Twenty-three properties were offered on the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island’s website as of May 14. They included a two-bedroom ranch house on 2.2 acres, at 57 North Midway Road, listed at $699,000, and a shingled Colonial-style home with six bedrooms and 600 feet of private beach, at 29 Winthrop Road, listed for $6.9 million.
The Vibe
Shelter Island is “chill,” to use Ms. Norris’s expression. On their first visit, she and her husband had paused during a cycling excursion when a child approached them. “He was maybe 10,” Ms. Norris recalled. “Maybe younger. He said, ‘Do you need help getting anywhere?’”
It wasn’t just that the boy was polite; he was totally unsupervised. She thought, “That’s what I want for my children.”
Kindnesses, small and large, are typical of the islanders, Mr. Kaasik said. After his daughter received a diagnosis of Hodgkin lymphoma, he received concerned messages from community members he barely knew.
“I’ve seen it happen over and over again,” he said. “It’s the perfect example of how things should be.”
The Schools
Christine Finn, who became superintendent of the Shelter Island Union Free School District in the fall, said the district has been reversing the greater Long Island trend of declining enrollments, and is showing an uptick. “We’re going to keep the trend going by offering more electives and AP classes,” she said.
Ms. Ketcham pointed out that the district just passed an $11.7 million budget, and divided among the 222 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade, that comes to more than $52,700 per student. “Come on, you can send a kid to Choate for that!” she said.
Among the elementary school students who took the 2017 state tests, 51 percent met standards in English versus 42 percent statewide; 54 percent met standards in math versus 46 percent statewide.
Among the middle school students, 48 percent met standards in English versus 40 percent statewide; 26 percent met standards in math versus 39 percent statewide.
The average SAT scores for high school juniors and seniors who took the test in the fall of 2016 were 609 for reading and writing and 557 for math, versus 528 and 523 statewide.
The Commute
Shelter Island is about two and a half hours east of New York City. The North Ferry departs for Greenport, N.Y., on the North Fork every 10 to 20 minutes. The ride takes eight minutes and costs $16 dollars round trip for a car and driver making a same-day return. The South Ferry departs for North Haven, N.Y., in the Hamptons every 10 to 15 minutes. The crossing takes four minutes and costs $19 round trip.
The History
In June of 1947, a conference about theoretical physics took place at the Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island. Twenty-four of the world’s leading scientists — including Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer, John von Neumann and Richard Feynman — gathered to discuss the foundations of quantum mechanics. On the way to what is now known as the Shelter Island Conference, the men were given celebrity-style police escorts, tributes to the work many of them had done on the atomic bomb.
Copyright © 2018 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times.