PAGE INDEX

On the main LIMP page:

LIMP Lodges Page:

On Continuation Page 0:

On Continuation Page 1A:

On Continuation Page 2:

On Continuation Page 3:

On Continuation Page 4:

On Continuation Page 5:

On Continuation Page 6:

On Continuation Page 7:

On Continuation Page 8:

Suffolk Page:

On this LIMP History page:

On the LIMP History Page 0:

On the LIMP History Page 1a:

On the LIMP History Page 2:

On the LIMP History Page 3:

On the LIMP History Page 4:

On the LIMP-Vanderbilt Cup Race page:

Mike Abbey has documented the Cunnningham Park segment in eastern Queens on Jeff Saltzman's page, including photos of remanent posts.

Vince Fitzgerald (see below) reported on a spur at Mitchel Field, while Bill Frohlich told of a spur to Jericho Turnpike at Commack - see LI MOTOR PARKWAY SPURS.

Motor Parkway Panel member Tom Walsh contributed an article on the LIMP for Larry Graff's " your About.com Guide to: Long Island, NY".

Motor Parkway Panel member Steve Anderson was quoted in a NEWSDAY article by Sidney C. Shaer, "Highway Hopes That Faded", on page A20 (Nassau edition) of the Friday, 05 Nov 99, issue, in the "Long Island - Our Future" series, "Predictions from the past that haven't come true ... yet".

Motor Parkway Panel convenor Sam Berliner contributed the cover story on the LIMP (especially as it traversed the narrow central portion of the Town of Oyster Bay - through Central Park/Bethpage) for the Winter 2000 issue FREEHOLDER, "The History Magazine of the Town of Oyster Bay", the publication of the Oyster Bay Historical Society, of which he is a member.

At the eastern end, on the northwestern shore of Lake Ronkonkoma, Vanderbilt built a grand restaurant in the style of the famous Parisian restaurant of the same name, the "Petit Trianon Restaurant" (in turn based on the "little" Palais at Versailles).  Besides sumptuous repasts, it also offered boating, bathing, picnics, snooker, tennis, and hunting and, in winter, skating, ice-boating, and toboganning.

Let us motor off to the very far end of the Parkway and "do" lunch at le restaurant Petit Trianon; c'est tres joli, ça!  In case you are not sure you wish to patronise Willie's little place on the western shore of Lake Ronkonkoma, here, courtesy of Motor Parkway Panel member Tom Walsh, is an original advertisement:

(Courtesy of Thomas V. Walsh, Esq., Mar 00)
[Thumbnail image; click on picture for VERY large image.]

{"Petit Trianon", indeed!  Sorry, it looks like one of the original service plazas
on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or a glorified Howard Johnson's, to me; all it lacks is
Simple Simon and the Pieman silhouetted on a sign on the roof!}

45 miles at 40MPH with "no police traps, no dust"!

{material above moved from the main LIMP page on 13 Feb 2002.}

Leading LIMP historian and Motor Parkway Panel member Robert Miller lectured at the Northport Public Library on 24 Mar 00.  There was a major exhibit on the LIMP, with many items and images shown.  Among others in the audience were LIMP emphemera collectors Pat and Rob Sisler; Rob endeared himself to us by wearing on a string around his neck an original LIMP toll plate; here is a snapshot of a color xerocopy of that plate:

(Image of xerocopy courtesy of Northport Public Library)
[Thumbnail image; click on picture for larger image.]

The prime mover and shaker behind the Motor Parkway was Wlliam K. Vanderbilt, Jr., a noted scorcher of the day; here he is in an old photo, sitting in his Mercedes {?} in what sure looks to be Garden City:

(unprovenanced photo - restored 25 Jul 2008)
[Thumbnail image; click on picture for larger image.]

(Photo 07 Aug 00 by and © 2000 - S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

     
(Image of xerocopy courtesy of Northport Public Library - actual plates from Vanderbilt Museum collection)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]

Note that 1932 toll plate #158, donated to the Museum by Valerie and Anthony Muzio, belonged to noted financier E. F. Hutton, himself, and was dug up from a scrap heap.

[There are now many other plates/tags pictured on LIMP History Page 3.]

The pictures above and which follow, are digital snapshots of items and images that were on display at the Library, taken under most adverse lighting conditions, in some cases through glass.  It is hoped that more professional direct reproductions can be made at the Vanderbilt Museum some day; until that might occur, please suspend critical analysis of the photography and immerse yourself in a bygone era.

The concept of the Long Island Motor Parkway was thrashed out at the old Garden City Hotel by William K(issam). Vanderbilt, Jr, and his friends and associates in 1906, after a fatality at his Vanderbilt Cup Race that year.  The races were then run on local roads and spectators crowded the course with reckless disregard for their own safety and that of the hapless drivers, who only had mechanical brakes, and solely on the rear axles at that, and had no place to go but into the onlookers when rounding a curve and finding the crowd in front of them.

Vanderbilt and his côterie hammered out a plan to build a racecourse from central Queens to Riverhead, with huge turning loops at Hicksville and Riverhead.  A holding company set out to aquire a right-of-way but, once word got out that someone was buying up an incredible stretch of land, they soon ran into serious financial restraints; even with all his millions and the money of his backers, Vanderbilt simply could not acquire clear title to a straight right-of-way.  As a result, instead of a 60-mile-long, straight racecourse, what they ended up with was a wildly zig-zag 45-mile private highway running only as far as the western shore of Lake Ronkonkoma.

One of their intentions was also that automobile manufacturers would test their cars on the road.

In one of the most dramatic (and prophetic) early racing pictures of all time, #19 slams around the hotel at Krug's Corner in Mineola in one of the first races (notice how vulnerable the onlookers are to the slightest slip-up on the driver's part or to just plain mechanical failure or mischance):

(unprovenanced photo)

(photo courtesy of the Smithtown Library, Handley Collection - all rights reserved)
[thumbnailed image - click on picture for larger image]

. Pardington, supposedly only a druggist from Smithtown, son of a Minnesota minister, the Rev. Rayner Stevens Pardington, drove some rather fancy cars and hobnobbed with the cream of society; just look at the pallbearers for his funeral (transcribed from a xerocopy of a Smithtown Library transcription, warts and all):

   Pallbearers for the funeral of ARTHUR  R  PARDINGTON on 29 July 1915


   Henry B. Joy             President: Packard Motor Car Co.

   Roy D. Chapin            President: Hudson Motor  Car Co.,

   Henry W. Clark           President: First & Old National Bank

Carl G. Fisher            President: Prest O Lite Co.

   S. D. Waldon             Director Engineering., Cadillac Motor Car Co.

   Henry Ford               Ford Motor Car Co .

   C. W. Nash               President: General Motor Corp

   Alvan Macauley,          Vice Prr{sic}sident & General Manager, Packard Motor Car Co.

   Henry M. Leland          Adv. Mgr, Cadillac Motor Car Co.

   Hugh Chalmers            President: Chalmers Motor Co.,

   Charles A. Hughes        Secretary, Detroit Atheletic Club

   E. L. Benson             President: Studebaker Motor Co.

   Russell A. A1ger

   A. Y. Gowen              President; Leh1gh Portland Cement Co.,

   F. A. Seiberling         President: Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

His father, the Rev. R. S. Pardington, later came to New York and served a congregation in Brooklyn.

A few maps of the race area and pre-LIMP era have been moved to the new LIMP-Vanderbilt Cup Race page.

This is an undated (but clearly prior to 1926 - no western extension) rate card for the Parkway, with a map naming only the Hotel Astor in Manhattan, the Great Neck Toll Lodge, and the Petit Trianon Restaurant.  The rate for a motor car appears to be $1.00 and that for a monthly ticket $15.00 (sorry it turned out so blurry):

(image courtesy of M. Desantis - all rights reserved;
low-resolution copy restored 26 Jul 2008)

From the 01 October 1910 (sixth) race, here is parking space ticket N^o. 1077 for Pratt's Farm at the corner of School Street and Old Country Road in Westbury:

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Toll Lodges

Let's start with this excellent old view (undated) of the Roslyn Road Toll Lodge (still standing):

(image courtesy of H. Kroplick)
[Thumbnail image; click on picture for larger image.]

We have Panel Associate Member Howard Kroplick to thank for this picture.

To rearrange the flow of these pages, the Toll Lodges material has been moved to LIMP History Page 0.

Toll Gates

To rearrange the flow of these pages, the Toll Gates material has been moved to LIMP History Page 0.

The Socony map noted is from 1926 or later (it has the western extension to Hillside); the LIMP brochure's map, although dated 1929, does not and there are some discrepancies in the lists and the names; it and the Long Island part of a Mobil map of the NY metro area from 1935 (Socony - Standard Oil Company of New York - became Socony-Vacuum, Socony-Mobil, and finally just Mobil), is also now on LIMP History Page 0, as is the large (and inaccessible and thus blurred and largely illegible) "Road Map of Long Island with LIMP overlay, the Petit Trianon Restaurant/Inn coverage, a Toll Lodge Daily Record Book, views of LIMP rubber stamps, four tickets signed by A. J. Kienzle, General Manager, and a rubber stamp reproduction of a LIMP plate.

Who's Who on the Motor Parkway