Archaeologists from the New York State Museum uncovered the foundation remains of a small house along North Country Road in Rocky Point, New York, in 1991. The house was occupied during parts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then left abandoned in the wilderness for roughly 150 years. The site was rediscovered during a cultural […]
Continue ReadingLong Island educators should consider the positive results to be gained for themselves as teachers, and more importantly for their students, through the teaching and studying of America’s history from the perspective of the history of our scenic and diverse Atlantic home. While I often used examples from Long Island’s past in my teaching of […]
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Bradley Harris, Kiernon Lannon and Joshua Ruff. Smithtown. Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia Press, 2009. Illustrations. Pp 128. ISBN: 0738564532. $21.99. The Township of Smithtown deserves recognition for its own story, and this book is ably put together by three authors who keenly know and embrace their subject. Settled in 1665, the town’s name derives from […]
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Gary Williams, Seal of Honor: Operation Red Wings and the Life of LT. Michael P. Murphy, USN. Annapolis, MD.: United States Naval Institute Press, 2010. Photographs, appendix, index. Pp. 216. ISBN: 1591149576. $29.95. Michael P. Murphy was a young man from Patchogue, Long Island, who heroically served his country and was tragically killed in the […]
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James Mauro. Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World’s Fair on the Brink of War. New York: Ballantine Books, 2010. Photographs, bibliographical references and index. Pp. 401. ISBN: 9780345512147. $28.00. New York’s 1939-1940 World’s Fair has long staked its claim on American popular memory, and seven decades on, it […]
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Sarah Garland. Gangs in Garden City: How Immigration, Segregation, and Youth Violence are Changing America’s Suburbs. New York, NY: Nation Books, 2009. Notes, index. Pp. 320. ISBN 1568584040. $26.95. Are there gangs in Garden City? Sarah Garland digs into the heart of Long Island’s suburbs to uncover the truth, the fact that gangs do not […]
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Figure 1: View of the Brooklyn City Water Works (Ridgewood Reservoir), copy of lithograph print by G. Kraetzer, 1859. Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Long Island Division, Eugene L. Armbruster Collection. The formation of Greater New York in 1898 cemented the city’s position as the nation’s premier metropolis and promised to address, if […]
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