Springs is known in art circles as the cradle of the absract expressionist art movement, including the base of operations for artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem DeKooning, and Randy Rosenthal. Many important writers live or have lived in or near Springs including Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Nora Ephron, John Steinbeck, and many others.
Artists were attracted to Springs because of its rural nature, despite being within 100 miles of New York City, and because housing prices “north of the Montauk Highway” on the bay side of the East Hampton peninsula have traditionally been lower than those closer to the Atlantic Ocean.
This has created a blue collar atmosphere of support people for the mansions closer to the ocean. Locals are referred to as “Bonackers” which comes from Accabonac Harbor in Springs. East Hampton High School has adopted the Bonacker name for its sports teams. No other school uses the nickname.
The main roads connecting Springs to East Hampton are Springs-Fireplace Road which is sometimes just referred to as Fireplace Road, and Three Mile Harbor Road. Jackson Pollock died in a car crash on Springs-Fireplace Road in 1956. Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner are buried in Green River Cemetery. Pollock’s grave is marked by a large glacial erratic stone on top of a hill, Krasner’s by a small stone lower on the hill. Since Pollock’s burial numerous other writers and artists have been buried in the cemetery joining the locals.
storeThe Pollock-Krasner House on Fireplace Road is owned by State University of New York at Stony Brook and is open for tours by appointment. It includes an external studio shed where dried paint from Pollock’s projects is splattered on the floor and evokes Pollock’s most famous works. The neighborhood around it is a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places. Fireplace Road gets its name from fireplaces at its terminus that were used to signal the residents of Gardiners Island that supplies were ready to be picked up.
