After Boom and Bust, Rocky Point Grows

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

Rocky Point in 1938 was a peaceful hamlet. That year the Long Island Rail Road, which had served the area since 1895, discontinued the Wading River line for lack of business.

It was so quiet, there was little to disturb the lone horse and wagon (in the photo, top right) at the intersection of Route 25A and Broadway, where a place called The Tavern (just past the Shell station in the same photo) had served a burgeoning summer population before the Great Depression crimped the land boom of the 1920s.

It was in the '20s when the North Shore community became an overnight summer resort. Starting around 1928, a city tabloid, the New York Daily Mirror, "offered 20-by-100-foot lots for $89.50 with a subscription to the newspaper," local historian Natalie Stiefel says. "They sold 4,000 lots by 1929. Most people bought five lots with a $12.50 down payment and $25 monthly payments."

Before that, Rocky Point was chiefly known as a cordwood shipping center and home of the first commercial wireless service, says Stiefel, who is writing a book called "Looking Back at Rocky Point."

The Tavern became a German-style nightspot and later Cafe Brianna's. Now being restored, it's expected to reopen as The Blue Lounge.

Spiro Karachopan, who owns the Sea Basin Restaurant, near the clock at left in the recent photo (at left), has seen the town and the traffic grow in the 21 years since he opened his place in a 1952 building that once housed the Rocky Point post office. He says few of the summer bungalows remain.