One of Fire Island’s most prestigious communities, The Summer Club, is privately owned. Residents of this family-oriented summer sanctuary have only a ten-minute walk to the excitement of Ocean Beach. The Summer Club offers a few rental opportunities each summer season.
The Summer Club was originally named the Fire Island Beach Club in 1946; it borrowed the concept of 100-year leases so that the land was held in common while the houses were privately owned. The Fire Island Beach Club was later renamed Summer Club Fire Island, and ownership by-laws were changed to allow more direct ownership of property.
Life at the Summer Club revolves around a distinctive-looking former Coast Guard station that now serves as its meeting and social center. The Summer Club grounds are not the original location of this Fire Island lifesaving station. Rather the station was situated in the eastern part of Fire Island, an area known as Blue Point, near the community of Water Island. Fire Island Beach Club purchased the station for $3,500 in 1946 and floated it on a barge to its current location. At the time these stations, which were no longer in use, were considered surplus by the Federal Government and their private purchase was not an uncommon practice. It is said that one of the first public meetings among Fire Islanders organizing to combat Robert Moses's plan for a highway through the center of the barrier beach took place at this station.
The Summer Club offers a few rental opportunities each summer season. There are no direct ferries to The Summer Club. Residents and visitors to the community must take the Ocean Beach ferry and proceed west on Midway past Corneille Estates.