Starting in late June, every day by noon, Joan Tulp, 95, hits the beach. Her caretaker drives her in her mini-SUV with GANSETT plates to the Amagansett Beach Association, where a junior lifeguard helps her into a wheelchair with giant puffy wheels and rolls her down to the water’s edge. There, the “unofficial mayor of Amagansett,” as she’s known, settles into her spot to the right of the lifeguard stand as friends, family, and fellow citizens pull their beach chairs into a semicircle around Tulp to share local intel. Tiara’d mascot of the Polar Bear Plunge, dog-show judge, pretend victim for lifeguard tests: Tulp has played many roles here since she first visited in 1951. She came in on the train from Brooklyn to meet her first husband’s Amagansett aunts: “I can’t tell you how charming it was, how quiet,” but “you can’t see the house anymore because the new owners put hedges all around — they’re those people who were selling medicines they weren’t supposed to. I forget the name.”
In This Issue
The Hamptons Issue
See All
A branch of the Sackler family reportedly now owns the house. Years of transatlantic moves, modeling in Paris, having kids, and getting divorced and remarried made Tulp dream of that quiet. In 1964, when a windfall $10,000 inheritance from her stepmother arrived in the mail, she and her new husband “rushed out to Amagansett, saw the only three houses in my price range, which was $15,000, if you can believe it,” and bought the house she lives in to this day (she says her neighbor’s place sold for $6 million years ago). This summer, there has been gossip about an especially rowdy group of college kids that made a mess of the beach, but so far the biggest topic of Tulp’s beachside conversations has been the brand-new East Hampton emergency room, which will eliminate the specter of literally dying from being stuck in gridlock on Route 27. “Have you ever sat in an ambulance in summer traffic to Southampton?”
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 23, 2025, issue of New York Magazine.
Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now to support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 23, 2025, issue of New York Magazine.
