Each family has its own Vineyard specialty, a beloved summer-after-summer tradition that everyone cherishes and remembers during those empty winter days in February. Sometimes it is the patriarch’s birthday party. Sometimes it is the matriarch’s birthday party, especially if the house belonged to her family.  Sometimes it is a Fourth of July or a Labor Day event when far-flung family members assemble to celebrate.  One of our friends, who is not French, gives a lavish annual dinner party with many guests in honor of Bastille Day.

A small cottage perilously close to the edge at Stonewall Beach in Chilmark has been demolished to prevent it from falling over the cliff, town building inspector Leonard Jason Jr. said Tuesday.

The demolition of the structure, which contains a bedroom, began Monday, Mr. Jason said. By Tuesday afternoon the demolition on Greenhouse Lane was complete. The debris was trucked off to the Edgartown landfill.

The Chilmark conservation commission voted this week to allow a house and several outbuildings dangerously close to the edge of a cliff overlooking Stonewall Beach to be relocated.

The Chilmark conservation commission voted this week that a house perched precariously at the edge of a cliff overlooking Stonewall Beach cannot be moved again, and instead must come down.

“We’re at the point where this house should be removed, not relocated,” commission chairman Pamela Goff said. “This [application] is just delaying the ultimate end.”

Chilmark town leaders agreed that the decision marks the first time in memory that a house will be demolished due to the threat of erosion.

The Chilmark Conservation Commission issued an emergency work certificate this week for two perilously-perched cottages on the cliffs of Stonewall Beach, fearing if they are not moved back from the edge they will fall into the ocean.

Natalie Conroy’s two small cottages on her property off State Road in Chilmark must be moved after tropical storm Irene stripped off 10 feet of cliff where the structures stand.