From Overhead, an Overview of Growth

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

THE FACE OF Long Island has been a-changing, and at no time is this more apparent than when it's viewed from the air.

If you were flying over the South Shore in the 1930s, even at the western edge where Nassau and Queens meet, you would have seen neat farms bordering the Southern State Parkway and truckloads of produce rolling down the ribbon that opened to the public in 1927.

The 1933 aerial view above shows a rural Central Avenue in Valley Stream, near the bottom, intersecting with the parkway, then a four-lane undivided pavement. Conceived by Long Island State Park Commissioner Robert Moses as part of a network linking New York City with the new Long Island state parks, the parkway reached Jones Beach in 1929.

Valley Stream tollbooths were installed on the parkway east of Central Avenue (Exit 13) in the 1950s, precipitating a 20-year battle for their removal, particularly after the toll was hiked from a dime to a quarter. The booths were removed in 1978.

Today, the Southern State Parkway is eight lanes wide from the interchange of the Belt and Cross Island Parkways to Exit 18. But the biggest change evident in the recent aerial photo is the sprouting of hundreds of homes that replaced farms and fields in the population explosion that began in the '40s and '50s.