Land Surveyor in Long Beach, Nassau County, NY

The city of Long Beach’s first inhabitants were the Algonquian-speaking Lenape, who sold the area to English colonists in 1643. From that time, while the barrier island was used by baymen and farmers for fishing and harvesting salt hay, no one lived there year-round for more than two centuries. The bark Mexico, carrying Irish immigrants to New York, ran ashore on New Year’s Day.

Austin Corbin, a builder from Brooklyn, was the first to attempt to develop the island as a resort. He formed a partnership with the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to finance the New York and Long Beach Railroad Co., which laid track from Lynbrook to Long Beach in 1880. That same year, Corbin opened Long Beach Hotel, a row of 27 cottages along a 1,100-foot (340 m) strip of beach, which he claimed was the world’s largest hotel. In its first season, the railroad brought 300,000 visitors to Long Island. By the next spring, tracks had been laid the length of the island, but they were removed in 1894 after repeated washouts from winter storms.

In 1906, William H. Reynolds, a 39-year-old real estate developer and former state senator, became involved in the area. Reynolds had already developed four Brooklyn neighborhoods (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Borough Park, Bensonhurst, and South Brownsville), as well as Coney Island’s Dreamland, the world’s largest amusement park at the time. Reynolds also owned a theatre and produced plays.