Nineteenth Century
In the 19th century, Long Island was still mainly rural and agricultural. Suburbanization started modestly on Long Island when reliable steam ferry service allowed prosperous Wall Streeters to get to new Brooklyn Heights homes in time for dinner. Rural traffic was served by the new Brooklyn and Jamaica Plank road through Jamaica Pass, among others. After the American Civil War, streetcar suburbs sprawled out onto the outwash plain of central and southern Kings County. Trolleys also brought workers from other parts of western Queens to Long Island City jobs.
The Long Island Rail Road was begun as a combined ferry-rail route to Boston via Greenport. The predecessor to the Long Island Rail Road began service in 1836 from the ferry terminal (to Manhattan) through Brooklyn to Jamaica in Queens, and completed the line to the east end of Long Island in 1844. Other rail lines to Coney Island, the Rockaways and Long Beach serviced the beach resort towns. The growing and merging railroads opened up more than 50 stations in (present-day) Nassau County and over 40 in Suffolk Country, laying the foundation for the future suburbanization of the island.
From 1830 until 1930, population roughly doubled every twenty years, and several cities were incorporated, such as the City of Brooklyn in Kings County, and Long Island City in Queens.
By the late 19th century, Long Island had become a summer refuge for residents of New York City. The Landing, in Glen Cove, is named for the spot where 19th-century steamship lines would disembark summer visitors, not far from where J. P. Morgan had his summer mansion. Long Island was the home of a branch of the prominent Roosevelt family, including author Robert Roosevelt, and his more famous nephew, President Theodore Roosevelt, who built a summer home at Sagamore Hill on the North Shore of Nassau County – on the outskirts of Oyster Bay. Roosevelt Field was named after Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore's son. Gold Coast Mansions on the North Shore of Long Island were also the homes of the wealthy Vanderbilt family and late-19th-century financiers and industrialists, such as John Paul Getty, Charles Pratt and others.
African Americans have been an integral part of Long Island history, most arriving first as slaves before the Revolution and working both at domestic and rural trades. New York and Long Island kept slavery until it was outlawed in 1799, with remnants remaining until 1827. Most freedpeople settled near where they had been living and had connections.
Until the 1883 completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, the only connection between Long Island and the rest of the United States was by boat. Other bridges and tunnels followed, and a suburban character spread as population increased.
On January 1, 1898, Kings County and portions of Queens were consolidated into The City of Greater New York, abolishing all cities and towns within them. The easternmost 280 square miles (725 km2) of Queens County, which were not part of the consolidation plan, formed a separate county in 1899. "Nassau", one of several names by which the island was once known, was revived to represent the newly established county. The figurative "separation" of Brooklyn and Queens from Long Island in popular usage must have begun around this time, since the Battle of Long Island and Long Island City (both nowadays in "The City") both allude to their geographical location on the island.
Read more about this topic: History Of Long Island
Famous quotes related to nineteenth century:
“The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“... the nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. Not.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)