The connected commercial structures at 73 Main Street in East Hampton, known as the Buckland Block, were begun in the 1870s and added to over the years. Leonard Willey, a local merchant, constructed the south store section in 1871 and mortgaged it to finance construction of the north section: a hall erected in 1876. The building was soon acquired by George Buckland and housed Buckland and Barton’s dry goods store, with the south building being used as a post office. Attached at the rear of the post office is an elevator tower, which gave easy access to the P.O. for D. A. Williams, whose patent medicine business was located in the rear annex. The hall was used for town meetings and once was the site of a murder trial. So many spectators attended that the floor began to give way and the trial had to be relocated.
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