Chapter 6: City and Suburb -- Newsday.com

Gateway to a Century

On the sunny afternoon of May 24, 1883, an ironmaker and political reformer named Abram Hewitt stepped to a podium to formally present the great new bridge over the East River to the mayors of New York City and Brooklyn.

Home on the Plains

In 1823, Alexander Turney Stewart was a 22-year-old immigrant sleeping in a room behind his dry goods store to save money. By 1848 he was a millionaire with a large marble store in Manhattan. In 1869 he founded a city.

The Reign of the Pickle King

It's nice to imagine an August day when the sun tackled the brim of Samuel Ballton's cap, tumbling onto his arms and his work clothes, leaving his face in the shadows.

'The Kelsey Outrage'

On Sept. 5, 1873, there was a funeral in Huntington for Charles Kelsey's legs.

The Oyster Was Their World

In the closing days of the 19th Century, the streets of West Sayville were paved not with gold, but with oyster shells.

They Were Big on Dignity

You might think that Addison Tuthill would have been impressed when P.T. Barnum himself, the greatest showman of his time, came all the way to the little hamlet of Orient on Long Island's North Fork just to see him.

Lost Indian Lands

Real estate promoters and local officials eager to bring the railroad to the East End of Long Island used questionable and possibly illegal means to break leases with Indians in Southampton and East Hampton towns a century ago and strip away their rights to 14,500 acres of prime real estate.

Getting on Track

In the 1850s, the Long Island Rail Road was the little train that couldn't.

Superman on a Bicycle

Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Those lines were made famous by Superman, but they were earned by a real person: Charles M. Murphy, a man from Brooklyn who rode his bicycle faster than a Long Island Rail Road train.

Long Island's Founding Jews

After Sag Harbor's heyday as a whaling center passed in the late 19th Century, the village fathers searched for new industries to revive the community. They persuaded a New Jersey manufacturer to relocate his watch-case factory to the East End port. One unanticipated result was the establishment of a Jewish community and Long Island's first synagogue in 1896.

A Catholic Presence on LI

`Probably we shall never know if Long Island was visited by St. Brendan or other Irish seafarers between the Sixth and Ninth Centuries . . .''

First Black Team a Big Hit

Babylon's Argyle Hotel was a white elephant. It was built too late; the area's booming resort-hotel era was coming to an end near the turn of the century. It was built too big; its 350 rooms and 14 cottages never were more than one-third occupied. Within the Argyle's short 22-year existence, it was sold, boarded up for almost a decade and finally razed in 1904.

Nassau's Difficult Birth

If Nassau County has anything approaching a Bunker Hill, a solitary stone marker in front of a Waldbaums on Jericho Turnpike will have to do.

Shifting Sands and Fortunes

The story is told of the Italian immigrant in the late 1800s in New York who learned three things on arrival: ``First, the streets aren't paved with gold. Second, they aren't paved at all. And third, you're expected to pave them.''

What's Cooking? Plenty

The Civil War had ended, and Long Islanders were looking backward as well as forward.

Gilding the Gilded Age

It seemed to be the arrogance of youth: As a teenage artist studying in Europe in the 1860s, Louis Comfort Tiffany was drawn to the medieval windows of Chartres Cathedral, haunted by their jewel-like colors and boldly wrought designs. But for the brash young New Yorker, their beauty wasn't enough. ``He wanted,'' says William Valerio, curator of the Queens Museum of Art, ``to make glass that was even more beautiful than the great cathedrals of France.''

The Architect of Desire

Stanford White, one of America's most famous architects, married into Long Island history -- though he was less than an ideal husband.

A Blow for Integration

It was the pride of Amityville -- a formidable, Victorian-style building of rich red brick, topped by an 80-foot bell tower. When the school opened in the winter of 1895, it advertised the community's growing wealth in unmistakable terms, with arched entryways, a white marble drinking fountain and curved staircases of dark-stained wood.

The White House on the Hill

Theodore Roosevelt was a two-fisted rancher in the Dakota Badlands, a corruption-hunting police commissioner in New York City, a guns-blazing Rough Rider in Cuba, a corporation-taxing governor in Albany, a trust-busting president in Washington, a big-game hunter in East Africa and a fearless explorer in the malariainfested Amazon jungle in Brazil.

Rough Riders Return

IIt was summer, 1898, and Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were coming home.

Caring for the Mentally Ill

As the 19th Century came to a close, city institutions for the mentally ill were overflowing. The hospitals were little more than warehouses, and treatment and therapy were negligible. Progressive doctors argued that the solution lay to the east -- to Long Island where patients could breathe fresh air and be productive in fields or workshops.

Recognizing a Luminary

Were it not for a modest 28-year-old draftsman-inventor, Alexander Graham Bell might not have gone down in history as the inventor of the telephone. And Thomas Alva Edison might have accumulated a lot fewer than his 1,093 patents.

Submarines in LI Waters

It didn't take long for submarine builder John P. Holland to decide that New York Harbor wasn't the best place to test his designs. While the protected waterway was calm enough, Holland's hope of working without interference was continually torpedoed by heavy ship traffic, curious citizens, and snooping by Navy vessels and foreign spies.

As Century Turns, Out With the Old

As the end of the 19th Century approached, Long Island began looking at itself, impressed by where it had been and awed by where it was going.

Chapter 6: City and Suburb

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