On the Long Island Continuation Page 0 (material moved 17 Mar 04):

On the Long Island Continuation Page 1 (material moved 08 Nov 00):

On the Long Island Continuation Page 2 (material moved 29 Apr 02):

(Map by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

Here is a satellite view:

Similarly, Block Island is on a line extended 15 miles through Montauk Point (and thence 'way across the open ocean to the Elizabeth Islands and on to Woods Hole and Falmouth on Cape Cod), but Block Island is politically part of Rhode Island (but is WAS once in Dukes County in New York State -see Long Island's Original East End on LI Continuation Page 1).

Brooklynites and Queens residents don't usually acknowledge that they are on Long Island.  That's all right; we don't think of them that way, either!  To many of us, New York City means Manhattan, with its plethora of theaters and museums, restaurants and stadia, etc., anyway.

It is always amusing to drive from Manhattan out 5 or 10 miles on Long Island in Queens County on the inappropriately-named Long Island Expressway (the Big Lie - it is rarely an "express" way and often called the "World's Longest Parking Lot") and find overhead signs directing one to (where else?) Long Island!

According to William Wallace Tooker's 1911 "The Indian Place Names of Long Island" (which book, I gather, is highly suspect), Paumanock could mean either " Land of Tribute" or "Land of Traveling by Water"; I'll opt for the latter, since the former seems one that would have been used about Long Island, not on Long Island (a common mistake in recording Native American place and tribal names).  See LI Continuation Page 0 for more on Long Island's original inhabitants.

LONG ISLAND BUFFS

should enjoy these great sites:

NEWSDAY's Long Island - our Story,

Jim Fordyce's Long Island's Page-of-Pages,

The Oyster Bay Historical Society,
and its superb publication (thanks, Tom Kuehhas), the FREEHOLDER,
"The History Magazine of the Town of Oyster Bay".

Also in Oyster Bay is the splendid museum and headquarters of the Townsend Society of America, where the archives and library of the Underhill Society of America are also housed.  All this ties in with nearby Raynham Hall, where the Underhill Society is headquartered.  Raynham Hall is named for the ancestral (and still) seat of the Viscounts Towns(h)end of Raynham in East Raynham (~4 miles SW of Fakenham), Norfolk, England; the Townsend and Underhill families are among the first settlers in this area and are related.

Bob Muller's fantastic " Long Island's Lighthouses, Past and Present" site,

and the Long Island Motor Parkway sites noted below.

Then there's also my own Frank Buck (and his Zoo) - Bring 'em back Alive page; the zoo was in Massapequa.

WOW!  Did you know that there was a working steam automobile called the "Dudgeon" (the builder's family name, not as in "high" - only a gudgeon would think that) built before the Civil War in Manhattan and a second car built right after the Civil War and housed and run right here in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York?  The second car is still around, in the Smithsonian and still workable, in Oyster Bay; the latter supposedly ran on the streets in the last quarter-century or so (the other car burned in the great Crystal Palace fire)!

Motor Parkway Panel convenor Sam Berliner, III (your host) contributed the cover story on the Long Island Motor Parkway (especially as it traversed the narrow central portion of the Town of Oyster Bay - through Central Park/Bethpage) for the Winter 2000 issue of the FREE-HOLDER, the newsletter of the Oyster Bay Historical Society, of which he is a member.  On page 20 of the Summer 2001 issue, I also covered the parallel route of the Central RR of Long Island.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History's Road Transportation exhibit page states, "The oldest self-propelled road vehicle is a steam-powered carriage built in 1866 by Richard Dudgeon of New York City {sic}"; it was on Long island for most of its pre-SI life (except for a post-WWII stint in Rhode Island).

SPLIA (new site) - The Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities
  with six house museums and more and especially its outstanding SPLIA Gallery in Cold Spring Harbor,
a refurbished Carnegie-era library now used as an exhibit hall.

Friends for Long Island's Heritage, with its many museums such as
Sands Point/Falaise, Old Bethpage Village Restoration, St. James General Store, etc.,
and especially its Cradle of Aviation Museum at Mitchel Field
(this latter in conjunction with Nassau County).

Of course, Sands Point/Falaise is/are on Cow Neck, so I invite you to visit the site of the
Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society

Nassau County Historical Society, P.O. Box 207, Garden City, N.Y. 11530.

Suffolk County Historical Society (in Riverhead).

Vanderbilt Museum
(William K. Vanderbilt, Jr.'s home, personal museum, and planetarium in Centerport).

See the Bowne House page for the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance
one of the earliest and most powerful (and successful)
pleas for religious freedom in North America.
(My apologies; this link dated the Remonstrance at 1627 in error.)

The Queens Historical Society,
although you really have to visit their actual place, "Kingsland", in Flushing
(map on the Bowne page).

Museums of Long Island - An Interactive Resource List.

Another star in LI's crown is the Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island;
their performances are not to be missed!

Long Island is also fortunate to have the

Long Island Studies Institute

(at) Hofstra University

(on the north side of Hempstead Turnpike [Rte. 24],
well west of the campus in the Library Services building)

516-463-6411 (call first)

Before I get into the rest of the material that was on this page and remains so, I moved a bit of it off, to , to make room for the following:

(1937 Aerial photo courtesy H. Kroplick - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail image; click on picture for VERY much larger (1.1Mb) image]

(Detail of 1937 Aerial photo courtesy H. Kroplick - all rights reserved)

The Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site is located at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road, West Hills, Huntington Station, New York  11746 (one block west of Route 110, just south of Northern State Parkway and Old Country Road), 631-427-5240.  There are also excellent write-ups about Whitman and the house, and about the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association on the 516.com area web.

The house was built ca. 1819 by Whitman's father and there are a number of other Whitman houses in the exceedingly-beautiful and historic West Hills area and his old newspaper office, a white stone building, still stands on the southwest corner of Main Street and Clinton Street (opposite Green Street) in downtown Huntington village (with a totally incongruous and inappropriate Gap store occupying the wholly-revised first.floor).

I'll have to get over to Huntington and West Hills and take some pictures and include the pre-revolutionary Peace and Plenty Inn while I'm at it.

If you love the North Country or the Adirondack Mountains, especially the area around the Fulton Chain of Lakes and the Eckford Lakes, Raquette Lake and Blue Mountain Lake, you'll love the Adirondack Museum smack dab in the heart of the Adirondacks at Blue Mountain Lake, New York.  It tells the story of the Adirondacks far better than any book could.  I heartily recommend a visit!  You might also wish to look at my own Adirondacks page.

You might also like to visit my other pages which are replete with historical information, such as railroads, including ALCO-GE-IR Boxcabs and the vest-pocket railroads, including Marion River Carry Railroad, the Degnon Terminal RR in Long Island City, and the Cradle of Aviation".  There's been quite a bit in the news over the years about the late George C. Dade, an early LI flier who chauffered Lindbergh and is the young kid helping him on with a parachute (but that famous photo was taken AFTER the Paris flight); I've done an oral history with him and will be adding bits here and there.

The former Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal Railroad's diminutive steam switching locomotive #16, the last steamer to run regularly on Long Island, is now out at the RR Museum of LI in Riverhead so one more item of our heritage has been kept from going off-island!

Now, lets keep that old LIRR car that has been sitting alongside the LI Expressway as a travel information office, from the torch!  I'd also like to preserve at a RR museum the old LIRR combine I saw on the west side of some N-S road out around William Floyd Parkway or so.

Also, see the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association and the legendary LIRR Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.

Speaking of the LIRR, I have an abiding interest in a number of things, including, especially, Z-scale (modelling 220 times smaller than life), the Long Island Rail Road, Long Island history (this page, et seq.), the earliest production diesel locomotives, known as oil-electric boxcabs, and the American Locomotive Co. (ALCo), builder, with General Electric and Ingersoll-Rand, of those first boxcabs.

This multiplicity of interests leads to an interesting dilemma; where do I cover models of historic LIRR oil-electric boxcabs?  The answer?  On all those pages!  Many are cross-linked but I commend to you checking out all of them.  Here, for a teaser, is the first mating of the custom Z-scale body shell to the custom chassis of LIRR #401, the world's first diesel road switcher, the second production diesel locomotive, and the first diesel locomotive to make a long-distance revenue run:

(photos 31 Oct 02 by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III)

That's a "gold" dollar for comparison and the clerestory roof is only sitting there, not yet properly emplaced.

BIG NEWS! - Dave Keller and Steve Lynch have produced a book of Dave's LIRR photos, many never before seen by the public, entitled:

Material about the

has been moved to the next page, LI Cont. Page 0.

Rock Hall This is an old pre-revolutionary (ca. 1767) Georgian house in Lawrence; the material has been moved to the Long Island Continuation Page 1.

Lord's Woods - about a two-mile stretch along the area now carrying Peninsula Boulevard through Woodmere and Hewlett; this material has been moved to the Long Island Continuation Page 1.

Long Island Questions - the material has been moved to the Long Island Continuation Page 1.

See the Long Island Motor Parkway page, et seq.

A Motor Parkway Panel has been convened to keep the LIMP alive in minds and museums.

Speaking of L. I. roads, how about that fascinating Skunk's Misery Road in Lattingtown?

I used to enjoy the Big Grey Celtic music concerts; the only thing Celtic about me is my touch o' the Blarney (BS = Blarney Stone) and my Scythian roots (my mother was a Magyar), but I dearly love the Irish and Scottish music - unfortunately Big Grey failed in 2006.

THUMBS UP!

THUMBS UP!  -  Support your local police, fire, and emergency personnel!

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S. Berliner, III

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© Copyright S. Berliner, III - 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 - All rights reserved.