New York State Route 110 - History

History

The entirety of NY 110 was assigned as part of the 1930 renumbering. In May 1936, the Long Island Tercentenary Committee proposed a new name for the stretch of NY 110 in the area of the Walt Whitman Birthplace, whose preservation was also proposed in 1936 due to the lack of a "suitable" memorial to the famed poet on Long Island. On March 12, 1940, the town of Huntington approved the measure, renaming a 4-mile (6.4 km) stretch of Huntington–Amityville Road as Walt Whitman Road.

In March 1953, work began on widening NY 110 between NY 25 (Jericho Turnpike) to the outskirts of Amityville. This new project, which was to cost $1 million (1953 USD), would expand the corridor to four lanes from two, as the road had already become the most heavily-traveled section of routes in Suffolk County. In 1970, the alignment of NY 110 was proposed by the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board to be replace with a new expressway between NY 27 (Sunrise Highway) and NY 25. The new expressway was proposed to help work with traffic projected to increase along the corridor from 1970–1985. The new expressway would replace the two–four lane-wide NY 110 corridor with six lanes.

Under the Long Island Transportation Plan, proposed in 2000, engineers suggested that NY 110 should be expanded to six lanes between the junction with NY 109 in Amityville to NY 27 along with a third lane between NY 27 and the Northern State Parkway. One of the engineers involved in the project stated that if NY 110 had more office building development, a light rail line would probably be constructed, but the engineer mentioned that the development was unlikely.