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There’s no question that Devon Yacht Club, with its unobstructed views of Gardiners Bay in Amagansett, has seen better days. Pat, a longtime member who, like all of the members I interviewed, requested to use a pseudonym to protect her standing at the club, lovingly described the main structure as “a building on top of a deck on top of a pile of sand.” It was constructed long before zoning and building codes existed — and it shows.

Members say the floorboards crack (and require repair) with regularity. When it rains, Pat added, you can smell the septic system. Temporary support beams are installed beneath the roof in autumn in case the snow grows too heavy in the off-season and threatens to cave in the whole structure. If you were to drive up Abrahams Landing Road to visit the club in winter, you could easily mistake the century-old institution for a ramshackle beach hut. (The club’s neighbors in the Devon Colony, with which the club shares its name, have included Paul McCartney and Michael Novogratz.)

On the evening of May 23 — Saturday of Memorial Day weekend — the club had been spruced up for its New Member Cocktail Party, a long-standing season-opening celebration. The interior and exterior were freshly painted, and rugs displaying the club’s red-white-and blue burgee had been rolled out in the lobby. Plaques listing the winners of the annual tennis and sailing races had been dusted and tacked onto the walls, alongside vintage photos of past boards of governors and the children who had learned to sail in the Junior Yacht program. Rain was coming down in sheets, and plastic drapes had been hung over the open sides of the covered deck. Longtime members welcomed the new ones over rosé and a meal that Pat described as traditional Wasp fare: simple coq au vin, grilled fish, and sliced roast lamb served buffet style.

Ties aren’t mandatory every night, but the majority of the men wore them “as an homage to the traditions of the club,” said Pat. The women were in summer cocktail dresses and flats or wedges. Anyone who opts for heels regrets it after they get stuck in the deck slats mid-stride. A few members told me the party was just as joyful and upbeat as it usually is — a reunion of lifelong friends after a winter apart. But for others, it was tense. “You’re walking into a room full of people you’ve known your whole life, and they knew your parents, and they can’t get away from you fast enough,” said Sam. “People who usually grin their ass off and say ‘How soon could we have dinner?’ now won’t speak to each other. There was glaring.” Between polite conversations about summer plans, members whispered about a charged question that is roiling their ranks and had come to a head earlier that morning: Should the weathered yet beloved clubhouse be demolished and rebuilt further back from where it currently stands, or should it remain in place and undergo an extensive renovation?

It’s a question that, to an outsider, likely appears resolvable and innocuous. The structure will change drastically whether it’s razed or renovated — why not pick a solution and move on? But these people seem immovable. For some, the building stands for more than a place to gather and take in the view. Members told me the simple clubhouse is one of the last vestiges of a dying Hamptons culture, one populated by the kind of polite, unpretentious people who will play tennis with anyone without asking what they do for a living and where a retired professor on a fixed budget, a millionaire lawyer, and a real-estate developer worth hundreds of millions of dollars can eat lobster salad and French fries together. They believe that bulldozing the building, in addition to erasing club history, could fundamentally change its “understated” charm — a word nearly every member I interviewed used to describe what they love about the place.

Of course, this sense of........

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