The Rise and Fall of America's Richest Suburb: Long Island, New York
Paul McAllister
137,174 views
Long Island was once the richest suburb in America — a place where Gilded Age financiers built hundred-room castles on the North Shore, where Charles Lindbergh lifted off from a grass airfield on the Hempstead Plains, and where Grumman Aircraft employed tens of thousands building the fighters that won World War II and the lunar module that carried men to the moon. After 1947, William Levitt paved over the potato fields and built the most famous planned community in history, turning Long Island into the template for postwar suburban life across the country. This is the story of how all of it came together — the Gold Coast mansions, the aviation industry, the Long Island Rail Road, Robert Moses's parkways, the great suburban boom — and how the very decisions that made Long Island prosperous eventually locked it into a crisis of property taxes, housing costs, and outmigration that the island still hasn't solved. From Otto Kahn's Oheka Castle to the Grumman Superfund site, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby to the young families who can no longer afford to live where they grew up.
Sources
"The Controversial History of Levittown, America's First Suburb" — Untapped New York (2024)
"Bethpage Residents: Grumman's Toxic Legacy Scars Our Community" — amNewYork / Newsday investigative project (2020)
"Nassau County: Jazz Age Enclave Hits the Fiscal Skids" — NPR, Jim Zarroli (2011)
"The Aviation Heritage of Long Island" — Joshua Stoff, Curator, Cradle of Aviation Museum
"How Robert Moses Shaped the Long Island He Misunderstood" — ClassicNewYorkHistory.com (2024)
"Oheka Castle History" — oheka.com and the National Park Service / Olmsted Archives
20 Comments
1970 to 2001. My children went to school there as it was one of
the safest and cleanest places to raise a family. I have since visited
the Island every time I return for a visit and couldn’t miss it’s steady
and precipitous decline. The high cost of living there and taxes have
driven most retirees away, leaving behind homes that were too pricey
for the younger generation to afford. County’s leaders failed to address
that problem for too long, but is still is not a bad place to live.
Beautiful corner lot. Paid 16 grand in 1965
It sold for 800,000 in 2025
The Rise and Fall of America's Richest Suburb: Long Island, New York
Paul McAllister
137,174 views
Long Island was once the richest suburb in America — a place where Gilded Age financiers built hundred-room castles on the North Shore, where Charles Lindbergh lifted off from a grass airfield on the Hempstead Plains, and where Grumman Aircraft employed tens of thousands building the fighters that won World War II and the lunar module that carried men to the moon. After 1947, William Levitt paved over the potato fields and built the most famous planned community in history, turning Long Island into the template for postwar suburban life across the country. This is the story of how all of it came together — the Gold Coast mansions, the aviation industry, the Long Island Rail Road, Robert Moses's parkways, the great suburban boom — and how the very decisions that made Long Island prosperous eventually locked it into a crisis of property taxes, housing costs, and outmigration that the island still hasn't solved. From Otto Kahn's Oheka Castle to the Grumman Superfund site, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby to the young families who can no longer afford to live where they grew up.
Sources
"The Controversial History of Levittown, America's First Suburb" — Untapped New York (2024)
"Bethpage Residents: Grumman's Toxic Legacy Scars Our Community" — amNewYork / Newsday investigative project (2020)
"Nassau County: Jazz Age Enclave Hits the Fiscal Skids" — NPR, Jim Zarroli (2011)
"The Aviation Heritage of Long Island" — Joshua Stoff, Curator, Cradle of Aviation Museum
"How Robert Moses Shaped the Long Island He Misunderstood" — ClassicNewYorkHistory.com (2024)
"Oheka Castle History" — oheka.com and the National Park Service / Olmsted Archives
Things were great in Morris County for 20 years until the developers were given permission to ignore all local zoning laws as long as 10% of the housing was “affordable” . It took me weeks of research to find out what the definition of affordable was. It turns out to be 20% less than the market rate. So you could build 300 units of high density luxury housing for $900,000 as long as 30 of them sold for only $720,000. Morris County looks more like Nassau County every month as huge condo complexes are built on every square inch of available land with no plans for highway expansion or development of public transportation alternatives. It was fun while it lasted .