Celebrity Travel
Southampton Is the Hamptons Village Old New York Chose Over Newport
Southampton, on New York's Long Island, turned from a farming village into a Gilded Age summer colony after the railroad reached it in 1870, and has kept a reputation as the more understated, old-guard counterpart to Newport ever since.
Sep 25, 2026 · BigTravel.in
The Long Island Rail Road reached Southampton in 1870, and the town's character changed within a generation: what had been a quiet farming and fishing village became a fashionable summer retreat for members of New York society looking to escape the city's heat. By the Gilded Age proper, roughly 1880 to 1930, Southampton had its own established summer colony, one that old accounts describe less as a resort chasing attention than a private arrangement among families who already knew one another.
Cottages, then something grander
The earliest Gilded Age houses in Southampton were built with a deliberate pretence of rural simplicity, modest wooden 'cottages' that fit a summer colony still keeping its distance from ostentation. That restraint eroded over the following decades, and by the early twentieth century Southampton had estates on the scale of Old Trees, a ten-acre property running from First Neck Lane to Lake Agawam that the architect Goodhue Livingston bought in 1912 and developed with stables, gardens and service buildings that would not have looked out of place among Newport's grander houses.
The comparison Southampton has never minded
Contemporary accounts of the period drew the contrast explicitly: Newport stood for a kind of showcased, competitive wealth, while Southampton was described as a resting place for people who had never needed to buy or fight their way into society in the first place. That framing, whatever its precision, is the one Southampton's old-money reputation has run on for over a century, a quieter counterpart to Newport rather than a rival trying to outdo it.
Traveller tips
- Southampton Village's Main Street and Job's Lane hold most of the town's shops and restaurants, and are walkable from the historic estate district.
- Dune Beach and Coopers Beach are among the more accessible ocean beaches; some require a resident or day parking permit in peak summer months.
- The Southampton History Museum, housed in a nineteenth-century sea captain's home, gives useful context on the town before the Gilded Age arrived.
- Summer weekends are the busiest and most expensive time to visit; late spring or early autumn gives a quieter, cheaper look at the same village.
Where this is
Southampton, New York