Arthur H. Heiser, Bird's-Eye Map of Long Island (annotated by author)
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 8, 1910
Hicksville Becomes a Suburb (Part II)
On Tunnel Day (the day in 1910 on which the LIRR first carried passengers beneath the East River), the Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed a two-page detailed aerial drawing of Long Island. The implication was clear: For New Yorkers who had been longing for homes outside the City, the whole of the Island now was within reach.
There also was a corollary: For developers - land speculators and builders, who for a number of years had prepared for this day by acquiring inexpensive farms and woodland - the time to harvest the profits of their investments was approaching. Caught up in the frenzy of Tunnel Day, many city-dwellers began to think about riding trains east, in search of suburban homes or weekend beach properties.
Other pages of the same edition featured large advertisements that tried to attract readers to specific towns. The whole Tunnel Day issue was quite educational, and also well-sprinkled with hype. For example, readers learned from it that Patchogue was The Metropolis of the South Shore, and even that Northport was The Naples of the North Shore.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 8, 1910
Apparently, someone found it difficult to believe this was not Long Island.
1910 postcard of Naples at picclick.com
It is easy to be cynical, but there were good reasons for city folk to relocate to Long Island, and many communities on the Island welcomed development and a chance to grow. Today, with more than a century of hindsight available to us, we have more perspective through which to trace how the transition to suburbia began in the years before the U.S. went to war in 1917.
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