Long Island Dirt:
Recovering our Buried Past
by Allison McGovern

Long Island’s beauty has always been recognized by permanent residents and visitors alike. In the nineteenth century, writers, poets and artists wrote about and painted the ecology of the island, the scenic views, and the local people they met along the way. These reports filtered through social networks, drawing the attention of regional people (many from New York City, but some from further away) who had the means to establish some of the earliest country homes and vacation cottages on the island by the mid-nineteenth century. But the 1870s brought a new focus on the villages and seascapes of Long Island, especially in eastern Suffolk County, and this gaze resulted from the intersection of commerce and industry, with art and the climbing heights of elite social status.

A group of artists who referred to themselves as the Tile Club brought Long Island’s seaside and country villages into this regional focus. At various times, the Tile Club boasted some of the most renowned artists of the time among its members, including William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, and architect Stanford White. The names of its members were coded by nicknames to maintain anonymity, and the membership would rotate to ensure the group kept a small circle. In 1879, a group of Tilers travelled east toward Montauk from New York City on the Long Island Railroad to experience Long Island’s vistas and find inspiration for their works of art. William Mackay Laffan, a writer and agent for the Long Island Railroad, was one of the travelers on the journey, and he wrote about the adventure in a piece published in Scribner’s Monthly.

It was a showcase for the artists of the time, who appeared to be discovering the charm of Long Island. The article included sketches and other artwork produced by the artists on the journey. But the piece was also an advertisement for the Long Island Railroad which was aiming to expand its services to Montauk. An important part of their journey was to note that the railroad had not yet reached Montauk, as the travelers had to depart the train at Bridgehampton Station and make their way east to Montauk on their own.

The piece in Scribner’s Monthly romanticized the people and cultures of Long Island, as if the scenes that they witnessed were snapshots of dilapidated buildings and historic settlements frozen in time. Their portrayals of Long Island’s local people were particularly adverse, especially regarding the indigenous Montauketts who were settled in Montauk at the time. Laffan presents a damaging, derogatory description of the Montaukett tribal settlement near Montauk Point, and his description was spun and reworked many times in regional newspapers from 1879 on.

Shortly after the Tile Club visit was shared in Scribner’s Monthly, approximately 11,000 acres of land at Montauk that had until that time been held by a corporation known as the Trustees of Montauk was sold at public auction. The land surrounded a small piece of property on which the Montaukett tribe was settled. The winner of the auction, Arthur Benson, promptly set out to remove the Montauketts’ claim to the land, and historians wonder if Benson had already been approached at that time by land speculators for expansion of the railroad to Montauk Point.

The Long Island Railroad became intimately entangled with commerce, land acquisition and development. In addition to providing a means to transport goods (mainly agricultural but finished goods as well) to New York City markets, the railroad marketed new developments along the railroad corridor. The expansion of the railroad was directed by some very wealthy, well connected people in New York City and Long Island, and those relationships led to deals for land acquisition that would expand the railroad’s stretch throughout various parts of the island.

As an agent for the Long Island Railroad, William Mackay Laffan promoted both the railroad’s service and the features of Long Island that were well-suited to new development. In The New Long Island: A hand book of summer travel designed for the use and information of visitors to Long Island and its watering places, a romanticized history of Long Island’s places illustrated by Tile Club artists was presented alongside a call for new residents to summer colonies.

There is a clear connection between the Long Island Railroad expansion and the development of resort communities at the shore, farming communities along the interior of Long Island along the railroad, and commuter colonies to travel between markets in New York City and family homes away from the city (as the suburbs began to develop). But the presence of large country estates was also a significant feature of Long Island life in the late nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth century. As wealth expanded for the wealthy elites, a desire to demonstrate that wealth with elaborate country homes and rural estates dominated the north and south shores of Long Island. Duck hunting, fox hunting, and fishing were also noted past times that drew urban dwellers to the rural areas of Long Island. As a result, Long Island’s local residents—many of indigenous ancestry—found work as hunting and fishing guides to wealthy visitors. Large estates presented accommodations for hunting parties and their families.

The cost of maintaining these large estates was felt during the Great Depression, and many fell into disrepair. Some were subdivided and sold off for new developments. Others were eventually acquired as parkland by New York State and Suffolk County. Today, old hunting grounds like those used by Benson in Montauk, hunting lodges like Black Duck Lodge in Flanders, and country estates like Meadow Edge in West Sayville are preserved and publicly accessible by Suffolk County Parks. These sites provide a wealth of history in the evolution of Long Island landscapes.

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