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Lido Beach

A Resort Development That Didn't Develop

Beginnings: Like the rest of the barrier island on which it sits, Lido Beach existed first as an uninhabited, barren sandbar. The island got its start when William Reynolds dredged the channel that bears his name to create the resort of Long Beach. The dredging made the island accessible to pleasure boats. In 1929, after Reynolds had been defeated for re-election as Long Beach mayor, he turned his attention to the unincorporated area just east of the city and built the Moorish-style Lido Beach Hotel, naming it for the resort villa in Italy. Reynolds envisioned the hotel as an anchor for another resort community, but the stock market crash that year and the subsequent Depression halted development for almost a decade.

Turning Point: World War II revitalized the hotel: the Navy used it as a discharge station. When the war ended, developers Bernard and Seymour Jacovitz led a building boom in the area near the hotel. Completion of the Loop Parkway in 1934 made Lido Beach more accessible - until then motorists had to wend their way through streets in Long Beach, Island Park, Oceanside and Rockville Centre - but unlike Long Beach, Lido Beach never developed into a major resort. Indeed, the hotel that gives the community its name was converted to residential condominiums in the 1960s, leaving Lido Beach almost entirely residential. Residents fought to keep it that way at various times in the past few decades, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Nightclubs and bathing clubs arrived, but residents did manage to beat back an attempt in the 1960s that would have allowed multistory apartment buildings.

Hot Spots: Lido Beach was home to a Nike missile launch control center during the early 1950s. When the center closed in the 1960s, the land was turned over to the Long Beach school district, which used it for a maintenance facility. Lido Beach was later home to the Malibu night club, a regular stop on many national rock tours that closed in 1996.

Where to Find More: The Lido Beach file at the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University in Hempstead.