A colonial-era East Hampton farming and baymen’s settlement on Accabonac Harbor (the “Bonac” of “Bonacker”). Long a community of Bonackers — families who for ~three centuries lived as baymen, fishermen, and farmers. The hamlet name “Springs” refers to the freshwater springs of the area.
Culturally working-class and physically modest (small frame houses, salt marsh, scrub) — which is exactly why postwar artists could afford it. That affordability is the hinge of its whole 20th-century identity.
Governance
Hamlet and census-designated place within the Town of East Hampton, Suffolk County; governed by the East Hampton Town Board. Common lands/waters (Accabonac and Three Mile Harbors) fall under the East Hampton Town Trustees.
Civic/cultural anchor: Ashawagh Hall (community hall, long a gallery/exhibition space for local artists) and the Springs General Store; the Springs School District is its own small district.
Deep history — the art colony
November 1945:Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner moved from Manhattan to a wood-frame farmhouse on ~1.56 acres at 830 Springs-Fireplace Road (Krasner found the house). Pollock converted the barn into his studio; it was here (1947–50) that he developed the drip/pour paintings that broke American art open. — CONFIDENCE HIGH (Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center).
The house is now the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, operated by the Stony Brook Foundation; it is a National Historic Landmark (designated 1994 — verify exact year against NPS; MODERATE) and open to visitors, barn paint-floor intact.
August 11, 1956: Pollock died at ~44 in a single-car crash on Springs-Fireplace Road, near the house (one passenger, Edith Metzger, also killed; Ruth Kligman survived). Krasner outlived him by decades, became a major painter in her own right, and managed his estate.
1963:Willem de Kooning built his studio/home in Springs (on Woodbine Drive, just east of Three Mile Harbor), ~17 years after Pollock and Krasner arrived; he lived and worked there into his last years (d. 1997). — CONFIDENCE HIGH.
Wider colony (worked/lived in or around Springs): Elaine de Kooning, Alfonso Ossorio (at The Creeks, the baronial Georgica estate), Conrad Marca-Relli, James Brooks, Charlotte Park, and the critic/poet circle. The 1951 “Irascibles” / Guild Hall exhibition milieu connects Springs to the New York School.
Green River Cemetery, Springs — the art colony’s burying ground. Jackson Pollock (boulder headstone) and Lee Krasner are buried here; it also holds other East End artists and writers (often cited: Stuart Davis, Ad Reinhardt, Frank O’Hara among those associated with East End burials — verify individual plots; MODERATE). Green River is itself a pilgrimage site.
Native ground
“Accabonac” and the neck-and-harbor geography are Montaukett / Algonquian names and ground; the Montaukett heartland runs from here east to Montauk. See ../../../native/montaukett (and the detribalization case Pharaoh v. Benson, 1910).
Key people & families
Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) & Lee Krasner (1908–1984) — the founders of the colony. · Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) & Elaine de Kooning. · Alfonso Ossorio (The Creeks). · James Brooks & Charlotte Park, Conrad Marca-Relli. · Old Bonacker families: Miller, King, Bennett, Conklin, Lester, Havens (see Research).
NARA records
naId 178121349 — “2010 Census Urban Cluster Reference Map for Springs, New York” — item; RG29 Records of the Bureau of the Census; Unrestricted (direct place-specific hit — the only clean federal record for Springs by name). Digital.
naId 75322204 — “New York SP Parsons, Ambrose, House” — item; RG79 Records of the National Park Service (National Register individual property in the East Hampton/Springs area; verify precise location).
No AbEx-era federal records for the artists in the Catalog under “Springs” — the art-colony archive is held by the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center / Archives of American Art (Smithsonian), not NARA. Honest flag.
Method: Catalog API v2 (x-api-key + browser UA); record.naId = true id; verified live 2026-11-03.
Money & real estate
Folded into East Hampton (11937) in most brokerage reports, so Springs-specific medians are not separately published (flag: searches returned no Springs-only median). As the historically most affordable part of the town, Springs sits below the Hamptons-wide ~$1.7M March 2026 median (James Lane Post / brokerage reports) — but “affordable” here is relative; artist-cottage provenance and proximity to the Pollock-Krasner House now command a premium.
Buyers: artists and art-world figures (legacy), then younger creative-professional and family buyers priced out of the villages, now increasingly second-home money seeking the “real/authentic” Hamptons story. Commercial character: minimal — Springs General Store, Ashawagh Hall, a few galleries; no strip, no nightlife. Brokerages: Corcoran, Douglas Elliman, Sotheby’s, The Agency.
Culture & character (elite-money read)
Springs is the East End’s authenticity reserve — the one place whose cultural capital comes not from wealth display but from the ghosts of Pollock, Krasner, and de Kooning and from the Bonacker baymen. The elite-money read: buyers pay for credibility and story, not for the ocean beach or the hedge-fund scene. It is the anti-Southampton — modest houses, art lineage, salt marsh — and that very modesty is now a luxury signifier.
Four-layer notes (time/water/earth/sky)
Time: colonial Bonac farm/bay village → 1945 Pollock-Krasner arrival → 1956 Pollock’s death → 1963 de Kooning → today’s National Historic Landmark + pilgrimage.
Water: Accabonac Harbor and Three Mile Harbor — the baymen’s ground that shaped the hamlet and still defines its edges.
Earth: the drip-paint barn floor at 830 Springs-Fireplace Road — the single most important square of ground in American postwar art.
Sky: the flat north light that drew the painters; Green River Cemetery’s quiet.