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Longtime Hot Vacation Spot

By paddlewheel, train, or car, this has long been the place to escape

By Alan J. Wax | Staff Writer

A postcard features Montauk Manor in the 1950s.

WIDE OPEN SPACES, sandy beaches, boating, fishing and ocean breezes helped make Long Island a tourist destination for New York City dwellers seeking to escape the heat and crowds more than a century ago.

The Island's earliest tourists came first by paddlewheel steamboats and later by rail. They stayed in deluxe waterfront hotels capable of lodging hundreds, if not thousands of guests, in campgrounds and in boarding houses.

Tourism "became a major industry" on Long Island after the Civil War, said Vincent Seyfried, historian emeritus of the Long Island Rail Road, adding that the railroad had special baggage cars. "Baggage was in its golden age. You had these enormous steamer . . . [trunks]."

Hotel rates may have run $10 to $12 a week per person and the LIRR's excursion rate from the city to the shore was 50 cents. "Anybody could afford it," Seyfried said.

Today, tourism again is a major industry on the Island. There are 15,151 hotel rooms, a third of them in the Town of East Hampton, according to Island Metro Publications, publisher of the Long Island Lodging Guide. And studies for the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau show tourism-related businesses employ 93,000 people.

The region's tourism economy might not have developed without Austin Corbin, the real estate magnate who headed the LIRR during the late 19th Century and spurred its eastward expansion. Corbin's involvement with Long Island began while he was visiting a son recuperating at a small Coney Island hotel, said Robert Mackay. In "Between Ocean and Empire," he wrote, "Walking east along the sparsely settled beach, Corbin sensed the resort potential of Long Island's ocean frontage." Coney Island had lured wealthy vacationers since 1829, when its first hotel was built, but it did not become an amusement center for the masses until the 1890s.

The Rockaways also became an early resort destination. The palatial Marine Pavilion was built in 1833 in Far Rockaway and catered to literary types such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Washington Irving, before being destroyed by fire in 1864. The colossal Rockaway Beach Hotel with space for 8,000 guests was four city blocks long. It never fully opened before going into foreclosure in 1882. Most area hotels were destroyed by fires in 1892 and 1899.Corbin, meanwhile, went on to develop the lavish Manhattan Beach Hotel in 1876 and the minaret-topped, four-story Oriental Hotel in 1880, both on Coney Island beachfront.

In 1882, his Long Island Improvement Co. built the fashionable Argyle Hotel in the midst of a 70-acre casino and cottage complex in Babylon, a community that eventually would be home to 11 hotels. Corbin further expanded his empire in 1885 with the 1,100-foot-long Long Beach Hotel. In 1890, Corbin bought a controlling interest in the LIRR and in 1900 began pushing its South Shore tracks east to Montauk, where he had hopes of building a deep-sea harbor.

"The railroad actually promoted Long Island to get the traffic," said Suffolk County historian Lance Mallamo. The LIRR published numerous colorful brochures containing glowing accounts of the Island's attractions.

By the late 19th Century, hotels were sprouting along the North Shore from College Point to Orient Point, on the South Shore from Coney Island to the Hamptons, and even on Shelter Island. At the turn of the century, Nassau and Suffolk had more than 24,000 rooms for lodging -- one-third more than in existence today.

Despite Corbin's efforts, the new hotels could not keep up with demand and residents began taking in borders. Mrs. J.C. Hawksworth of East Islip took in eight guests in her home and charged $8 per person a week in 1903, according to "Between Ocean and Empire." Many opulent hotels thrived, especially during the 1920s. But lifestyle changes soon turned these grand old hotels into anachronisms. The rich bought estates, and advances in transportation allowed more distant travel. Moreover, the 1929 stock market crash, the Depression and World War II ended the boom.

Most no longer exist. "If they didn't burn down, they got torn down," said hotel industry consultant Tom McConnell, a senior managing director of Insignia/ESG Hotel Partners in Manhattan. A few, particularly in Long Beach, became senior citizen residences.

One landmark hostelry, the 200-room Garden City Hotel, which debuted in 1875, remained in business for almost 100 years. The fabled hotel was a popular watering spot for New York City society, attracting the likes of the Astors and the Vanderbilts. Aviator Charles Lindbergh stayed there the night before his famous solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. But the Garden City Hotel closed in 1971 and was razed in 1973. The current 280-room Garden City Hotel, perhaps the most opulent on the Island today, opened on the same site in 1983.

While Corbin figured prominently in developing the Island's tourism industry, other factors also were at work. Annual summer outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, beginning in the 1820s, gave city dwellers a reason to travel to Long Island, Mallamo said. "Anybody who could get out of the city did so. It was a matter of life or death."

Orient Point was home to a famous resort hotel developed in the 1870s. The Orient Point Inn, built around an inn that dated to 1796, counted among its guests President Grover Cleveland and orator Daniel Webster. James Fenimore Cooper wrote "The Sea Lions" there and Walt Whitman found inspiration on its grounds to pen "Leaves of Grass." The inn closed in the 1960s and subsequently was demolished.

Shelter Island began as a summer colony when members of the New York Yacht Club built the Prospect House Hotel in 1872. A year later the Manhasset House Hotel, which entertained 15,000 guests during the next decade, was built by a Massachusetts group.

Fire Island owes its resort charter to Manhattan hotelier David S.S. Sammis, who in 1855 opened his huge Surf Hotel in Kismet. After three decades, the 500-room hotel was condemned by the state in 1892 for use as a quarantine station after a cholera outbreak in Europe. In 1980, the site became a state park.

Religion also played a role. The Methodists established huge summer campgrounds in Sea Cliff and Merrick, said Nassau County historian Edward Smits. Another religious encampment at Point O' Woods on Fire Island drew thousands for revival meetings.

And myths that freshwater Lake Ronkonkoma had healing powers led to establishment of a resort community there in the 1890s. The Petit Trianon Hotel, named for the 18th Century French palace, was built by tycoon William K. Vanderbilt II.

The Hamptons, the Island's resort center today, first developed as a summer colony after the LIRR inaugurated daily service to Bridgehampton on April 17, 1879. In Hampton Bays, the Canoe Place Inn developed as a luxury resort getaway for the rich and famous. Its guest list included Gov. Alfred E. Smith, Cary Grant and Helen Hayes.

Sedate Southampton owes its resort character in part to showman P.T. Barnum, who with his friend, Col. Mortimer Howell, built hotels in the seaside village. The Irving, a four-story frame structure, was the scene of most of the social swirl in the village during the 1920s.

Montauk, today the area's resort capital with 90 hotels and motels, was established in 1878 by tycoon Arthur Benson as a 10,000-acre hunting and fishing resort for the well-to-do. He built eight cottages, designed by the pre-eminent architect of the day, Stanford White, but Benson soon died. In 1885, his estate sold 5,500 acres to an investment group led by Corbin, who dreamed of bringing transatlantic ocean passengers from Fort Pond Bay to New York aboard his railroad. Corbin, however, died in a carriage accident in 1894 before he could bring it about.

In 1926, Carl Fisher, the dynamic entrepreneur who built Miami Beach, thought he could create a similar resort around Lake Montauk. He built Montauk Manor, a 178-room luxury hotel on a bluff overlooking Fort Pond Bay, and the Montauk Yacht Club on Star Island. But the stock market crash did him in and he ended up bankrupt in 1932. He died in 1939 and his resorts sat idle for years. Both Montauk Manor and the Yacht Club have been renovated and operate today.

After World War II, motels in Montauk sprung up to cater to deep-sea sport fishers brought to the East End by special LIRR trains and by automobiles. As the years passed, motels added rooms and by the 1970s Montauk had become the motel mecca. One was immortalized in the 1976 Rolling Stones song "Memory Motel."

During the 1980s, many East End resort motels converted to cooperative time-share ownership. Among them was the exclusive Gurney's Inn Resort & Spa, which, since being acquired by the Monte family in 1956, has been expanded from a 22-room, four-cottage facility into 125-room renowned resort.

A decade of high prosperity, longer vacations and increased automobile travel created a demand for even more deluxe accommodations and before the 1950s were out, a new breed of grand motel developed with swimming pools and cocktail lounges.

The area's first deluxe motel was the 320-room International Hotel at Idlewild Airport (now the 520-room Travelodge New York at JFK). A score of deluxe motels opened near both Idlewild and in Elmhurst, near LaGuardia Airport, close to the 1963-64 World's Fair site in Flushing.

During the 1960s, deluxe motels sprouted across the Island. Developer Harry Helmsley opened the Island Inn at Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury in 1960. Its restaurant, the John Peel Room, became a gathering spot for politicians and celebrities who worked at the nearby Myerberg motion picture studio. The hotel was torn down in 1994 to make way for retail stores.

Soon after, Holiday Inns and Howard Johnson Motor Lodges could be found throughout Nassau County and western Suffolk.

In 1971, a 182-room Holiday Inn opened in Hempstead and quickly became the center of Hempstead business and political life. In 1974, it was the site of the state Republican convention. But after the opening of the 401-room Long Island Marriott Hotel in 1982, its business turned down. Recently, it was rechristened the Best Western Hempstead and is being upgraded by management.

Momentum was gaining for another building boom, this time for business traveler accommodations. Suffolk developer T. John Folks III started the boom after his purchase of the former Dutch Inn in Ronkonkoma and its expansion and conversion into a Holiday Inn. In 1980, he built a Sheraton Hotel in Hauppauge, a Hampton Inn in Commack and the Marriott Wind Watch, also in Hauppauge. The cost of building the Wind Watch, which opened its doors in 1989, just before the recession hit with full force, forced Folks to give up control of each of his properties.

Now, another boom is beginning with another type of hostelry, the extended stay hotel, aimed at business travelers on long-term assignments. The first, the Marriott Residence Inn in Plainview, has been bustling since opening in 1989 and as many as a half dozen more are under construction or planned.