Long Island Motor Parkway preservationists cheer discovery of vintage license plates

They were discovered the way so many valuable historical objects are — by accident.

Joyce Weidenaar was sifting through her father Philip Rothblum’s belongings after his death in August 2021 at age 98. A year later, Weidenaar, who grew up in Rockville Centre and lives in Manhattan, was going through decades of paperwork that her dad, a real estate developer, had accumulated.

Inside a large manila envelope in one of the two files that had been moved from Rothblum’s Madison Avenue office, she found something most unexpected.

License plates.

Seven of them. Emblazoned on the top of each — along with a number — was “Long Island Motor Parkway.”

The 5-by-5-inch steel plates were brightly colored, with simple, bold designs that didn’t seem to have dimmed over time. “They seemed to me like a form of folk art,” recalled Weidenaar, a professional artist. “My dad had wrapped each of them up carefully. I think he sensed the historical value of these.”

Trying to find someone who might be interested — and eager to learn more about them — Weidenaar was eventually referred to Howard Kroplick, of Roslyn. The former Town of North Hempstead historian, author and antique car collector knew exactly what the plates were.

“They are the most significant memorabilia from the world’s first automobile parkway,” Kroplick said.

Motor Parkway Preservation Society

On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon in early November, Kroplick put the seven plates found by Weidenaar — plus an additional six that her husband, Reynold, recently found in another old box of her father’s things — on display in his private 2,000-square-foot Roslyn garage. Kroplick had obtained the 13 plates from Weidenaar, but she requested they keep the details of the transaction private.

Kroplick’s garage, built in an old factory, is a Long Island automotive museum of sorts, and it’s a gathering place for Motor Parkway enthusiasts (524 of whom are members of the Motor Parkway Preservation Society, an organization that Kroplick heads).

Among those on hand was Al Velocci, who, along with Kroplick, wrote “The Long Island Motor Parkway” (Arcadia Publishing) and is an expert on the Motor Parkway plates. According to Velocci, 7,400 were issued between 1912 and 1937, but only about 120 are known to exist today. (Perhaps not a surprise then, that a Motor Parkway plate can command up to $3,000.)

Velocci describes the plates as “a forerunner of the E-ZPass. As the car approached an entrance to the Parkway, the gatekeeper took notice of the plate, opened the gate and waved the motorist on his way.”

Gatekeepers? Yes, access to the motor parkway — which snaked 48 miles from Fresh Meadows, Queens, to the western shore of Lake Ronkonkoma — was limited to a dozen entry points, each guarded by a toll station. Much of the population of Long Island at the time was not welcome on the Motor Parkway.

The whole idea was conceived in the waning years of the Gilded Age. In fact, the man behind the parkway was the scion of one of the towering families of that era.

A Vanderbilt's passion

A little respect. That’s all William Kissam Vanderbilt II wanted.

As the great-grandson of 19th-century shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt — whose personal fortune has been estimated at about $3 billion in today’s money — and the son of William K. Vanderbilt, who managed the family’s vast railroad assets, including the New York Central Railroad, the young Vanderbilt had a lot to live up to. By the early 20th- century, “Willie K.” (as the junior Vanderbilt was often referred to) was falling short.

“He felt the burden of three generations of Vanderbilts who had basically built the modern world,” said Steven Gittelman, author of “Willie K. Vanderbilt II: A Biography.” “He had this need to make a contribution and to be remembered for that contribution.”

Willie K. also had a need for speed. He was born in 1878 and came of age with the automobile. He was fascinated by cars, and particularly by the idea of driving them really fast.

This he was doing with some success: In January 1904, Willie K. roared along the hard-packed sands of Daytona Beach, Florida, in a 90-horsepower Mercedes, achieving a then-world record speed of 92.3 mph. Later that year, he organized a race closer to home, on the dirt roads of Nassau County. The Vanderbilt Cup attracted huge crowds for its first several years, but when a spectator was killed during the 1906 race, Vanderbilt shifted gears. Perhaps what was required, he thought, was a private road — smooth, safe and for automobiles only.

“It has been the dream of every motorist to own a perfect car and to have a road without speed limit,” he declared in a speech to the Automobile Club of America. The road he envisioned would allow motorists to “enjoy a ride without dust, without bumps and last, but not least, have no interference from the authorities.” Meaning, Willie K. and his buddies could drive as fast as they wanted.

$50 plates opened gates to a drive like no other

On Dec. 3, 1906, the Long Island Motor Parkway Inc. was incorporated. Vanderbilt, then 28, was the president, but his partners in the enterprise included many boldface Gold Coast names: Whitney, Astor, MacCay, Belmont.

It took two years to complete the new road to the standards they envisioned. The 22-foot-wide Motor Parkway (50 feet at some parts) officially opened Oct. 10, 1908. It was constructed on a bed of reinforced concrete (still used in road-building today), and featured banked turns and guardrails. Sixty bridges were built over the new parkway to eliminate intersections and railroad grade crossings, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted driving. Vanderbilt also hired the distinguished architect John Russell Pope (best known for the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives building in Washington, D.C.) to design six of the toll lodges that would provide access to the parkway.

Starting in 1912, those paying the annual $50 parkway access fee were issued numbered plates. Some VIPs got their plates gratis, including J.P. Morgan — who helped finance the parkway — and Willie K.’s father, William K. Vanderbilt I.

Road to nowhere

Despite its innovative features and shiny new plates, however, the road had a problem. “It comes from nowhere and goes to nowhere,” Gittelman noted in an interview.

Originally, the parkway was projected to run all the way east to Riverhead. But getting permission to build through privately owned property proved far more difficult than Willie K. had envisioned. While it enjoyed popularity — during its peak years from 1924 to 1930, more than 150,000 cars drove on the Motor Parkway  a combination of the Depression and the introduction of Robert Moses’ new state parkway system in the 1930s sealed its demise.

After years of dwindling ridership and debt, on Easter Sunday 1938, the Long Island Motor Parkway was closed. It soon became a ghost road, obscured by the Long Island suburbs that emerged after World War II.

William K. Vanderbilt II died in 1944, at age 65. “A man of reticence” is how The New York Times described him in its obituary. “He was best known as a sportsman.”

‘A concept before its time’

Some would say the Long Island Motor Parkway was a rich sportsman’s dream that failed. But did it really?

“I might challenge the use of the word ‘failed,’ ” said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University in Hempstead. “It clearly was a concept before its time, but it was a concept that eventually became the norm in these times.”

As the first road designed specifically for automobiles, the Motor Parkway presaged a Long Island in which parkways have become vital arteries.

“He was looking for validation, and this is important validation,” Gittelman said.

He is also remembered in more concrete terms.

“We still have a Vanderbilt Motor Parkway,” Levy said. The final 14-mile stretch of the old parkway route is now a modern roadway, Suffolk County Road 67, running from Dix Hills to Ronkonkoma.

As an enthusiast himself, perhaps the legacy Willie K. would have most appreciated is the community of enthusiasts that has grown around his parkway. “Long Islanders are obsessed with their cars and they’re fascinated by their history,” Levy said. “The Motor Parkway is the perfect combination.”

Ghost road remains

What intrigues many Long Islanders about the ghost road, Kroplick said, is that sections of the original parkway remain, along with still-standing boundary posts, abandoned bridges, remnants of the toll lodges. And, he added, “sometimes even a buried Motor Parkway license plate turns up.”

Hence, the excitement over Joyce Weidenaar’s discovery of her father’s cache of plates. But the question of how they ended up among Philip Rothblum’s effects remains. She believes they may have been found in the 1970s, when her dad was developing garden apartments on Hicksville Road in Bethpage. As one of the old Motor Parkway toll lodges had been located nearby, the plates may have been collected there and left in an old storage building.

Learning about Vanderbilt, his parkway and the plates has been a revelation for her. “I mean, who knew?” she said. “It’s incredible to think that this parkway existed.” And that there is a community around it today. “It would have given my dad great satisfaction to know that these plates are in the hands of people who are so passionate about this.”