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300 Years of Business

From crops to computers, from shipyards to Fortune 500 companies

A group of people cuts into a whale on the beach in Amagansett. In the 1840s, the state's and the Island's second-biggest employer was the whaling industry -- second only to agriculture. (East Hampton Town Marine Museum)

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THREE HUNDRED years ago, Long Island was a land of farmers, families whose living depended on the fertile earth and their talent cultivating potatoes, corn, wheat and other crops. Thirty years ago, Long Island began growing a new crop -- the early biotech and technology firms that now are a dominant industry here.

In three centuries, Long Island's fields, hills and shorelines have sprouted with elegant Victorian hotels, shipyards, ropemakers and sailmakers, downtowns with blacksmiths and barrooms, and malls that lured away some of the downtowns' stores.

Fortune 500 companies have grown up here, and thousands of mom-and-pops still dot the roads and turnpikes. Some businesses have flourished for generations, others have seen more rises and falls than the Long Island Sound during a Nor'easter.

The region's economy has grown from one depending on potatoes and other crops to one with 1.1 million jobs -- from store clerk to software engineer to emergency room nurse.

What we present here cannot capture all of the richness, ruthlessness and risk-taking of 300 years of business history on Long Island. Books are filled with the stories of a Minnesota farmboy named Hector Skiftor, who founded defense company AIL Systems, of the farm families who have stayed on the land for generations and of real estate magnate Austin Corbin, who built some of the beautiful hotels in Queens and on Long Island in the late 1800s.

The inventors and scientists and entrepreneurs who created MRIs and scanning technology, emporiums and elegant inns have stories enough for another book. Instead, Newsday's Business Report focuses on seven key areas that helped shape our economy -- farming, fishing and the sea, tourism, downtowns, the defense industry, shopping malls and the computer and biotech revolutions. These pieces are a part of Our Story, and have a part in understanding Long Island's economy today.

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