East Hampton, where the famous are never far away

BY BARBARA SHEA

OK, so nobody heads to the Hamptons for the history. But visitors who add museum-hopping to the usual whirl of sunning, shopping, dishing, noshing and star-gazing are guaranteed to encounter more celebrities (though granted, some may have been dead a century or two).

Luminaries have shaped the South Fork's resort villages for generations and their often deliciously gossipy egacy pervades the area -- from the 18th and 19th century landmarks along East Hampton's broad, elm- shaded Main Street to the 20th century art colony shrines of rural Springs and the oceanfront trophy houses where Old Money meets New Media.

You won't find maps pinpointing current celebs' homes -- this still isn't Hollywood, after all. But the haunts of past notables are more or less in plain sight, if sometimes open for limited hours or only by advance reservation. Such restrictions, however, are imposed to make your visit more enjoyable.

One of East Hampton's early Renaissance men (and theatrical superstars) was John Howard Payne, America's first actor to play Hamlet and to appear in Europe. He also was a diplomat, a poet and a .writer of comedy, tragedy, melodrama and history. But he is immortalized for one opera lyric that he penned while homesick in Paris, sup.posedly dreaming of an East Hampton cottage he'd visited in his youth. That house is now named for his famous song: "Home Sweet Home."

There's no proof the globe-trotting Payne or any family member ever lived there (one theory is that 19th century neighbors who had a key concocted the tale after he became famous so visitors would pay them for a tour). But the myth lives on to a degree at the antiques-filled house on James Lane, which has a lovely garden and a backyard windmill (though not in perfect working order like Hook Mill, a landmark on the green at the other end of the village). Home Sweet Home director Hugh King wears white gloves to handle the objets d'art and brims with intriguing esoterica -- you have to pity bachelor Payne's unrequited "menage a nothing" (he was smitten with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's widow, who loved writer Washington Irving).

As well as showing the house, the witty, knowledgeable King also leads village walking tours -- including one of South End Cemetery, on the Town Pond green between James Lane and Main Street. Its weathered tombstones chronicle several centuries' passings of national significance: 1920s bons vivants Gerald and Sarah Murphy, whose soirees here and abroad included everyone from Pablo Picasso to F. Scott Fitzgerald; 19th century landscape painter Thomas Moran, a founder of the town's exclusive Maidstone Club; U.S. President John Tyler's son John, born to wife Julia of East Hampton's socially prominent Gardiner family (Tyler's summer White House adjoins Moran's former home).

Several buildings on this western end of Main Street are operated by the East Hampton Historical Society as museums: the 1740 Osborne-Jackson House (where several rooms are open as a decorative arts gallery); 1784 Clinton Academy (New York's first prep school) and the 1731 Town House (a playhouse-sized one-room school that once also served as the town hall). The present Village Hall across Main occupies the Lyman Beecher House, where the preacher father of writer Harriet Beecher Stowe began his family (it was after he'd relocated to Ohio, however, that daughter Harriet was inspired to write her antislavery novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin"). Nearby Guild Hall has been a venue for art and theater greats and near-greats since 1931.

If you think East Hampton's business strip is nothing but designer shops, by the way, stop by the Ladies Village Improvement Society resale store -- stocked with affordable books, clothes and household items. It's worth a look both for the building (another imposing Main Street mansion) and for the possibility that your bargain treasure might be a celebrity castoff. Can a day's outing get any better than that?

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East Hampton, where the famous are never far away

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