USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 40
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 40
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In these greenest of years, Bryant studied nature-Long Island nature-in an intense yet objective fashion. "Cedarmere" became to him what "Grasmere" was to Wordsworth. He looked about him, and saw, clearly now, that the physical life was an emanation of a higher spiritual life. This was a happy discovery for him, one which gave him an optimism founded on principle. He no longer wept over the transience of life as reflected in the change of seasons, but rejoiced in the flux and variety which promised a kind of immortality. The volumes of poetry he produced on Long Island, Thirty Poems ('60), Hymns ('69), Little People of the Snow ('73), Among the Trees ('74), and Flood of Years ('78), are perhaps his best; for in them his philosophy of art and life is settled. It can only be supposed that this was so because he was settled in his surroundings. Possessed always of nobility of mind and technical skill, he needed a "Cedarmere" to change verse to poetry. More- over, when in his later poems he wrote of nature, it was the nature in Roslyn he meant. Islanders should feel proud that when Bryant gave the following advice to would-be poets, he most probably had his adopted home in mind :
Seek'st thou, in living lays, To limn the beauty of the earth and sky? Before thine inner gaze Let all that beauty in clear vision lie ; Look on it with exceeding love, and write The words inspired by wonder and delight.
Walt Whitman certainly knew the meaning of those words. His poetry, which has always claimed as first attributes the phrases "spontaneous in rhythm" and "natural in language", seemed to spring from earth and air. Of all the Long Island poets he was most influenced by the Island-for which he paid her highest tributes.
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This "good gray poet" was born, May 31, 1819, in West Hills, near Huntington, "a romantic and beautiful spot", as he called it. Although his family moved to Brooklyn when Walt was a boy, he made frequent visits to his grandfather's home on Long Island Sound. The places he apparently knew best were Norwich, Hemp- stead, Babylon, Smithtown (where he taught school and headed the local debating society) and the cottage in West Hills (where "the lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed").
Like so many other American writers, Whitman had his start as a newspaperman. When an old man he remarked: "My first
Hallock's Inn, Smithtown Branch, Where Walt Whitman Boarded While, as a Young Man, He Taught School in that Village
real venture was The Long Islander, in my own beautiful town of Huntington in 1839." This paper contained his first poem, a Bryant-like Our Future Lot. How true are the lines of Jesse Merritt, Nassau County Historian : "Huntington's earth is now epochal soil" because of the "Fonts now lost, but set as he sang; for Whitman the printer was how he began."
Whitman really wrote only one book, Leaves of Grass. The first line of that work, "Starting from fish-shape Paumanok", begins a long series of tributes to his native soil. Very frequently in his later life he longed "to go back to the place where I was born/ to hear the birds sing once more/ to ramble about the house and barn/ and over the fields once more/ and through orchard, and/ along the old lanes once more." Indeed, his earliest impressions were his strongest, the making of the poet as well as the man. As he tells us: "There was a child went forth every day/ and the first object he looked upon he became/ And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day/ Or for many years or stretching cycles of years."
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Poet and man, Whitman was large; consequently his influences were many. One was the magnificent preaching of the Long Island Quaker, Elias Hicks; this gave his poetry its reverential, almost messianic tone. Another was the sea, which to him was like "a cradle endlessly rocking." In the Paumanok and Passage to India sections of the Leares, one can find the sea and the things of the sea in many physical and spiritual connotations. Whitman loved the people of Long Island, especially her working people, like farmers, wagon drivers, sailors and farm-mothers. The friendliness and earthiness of Islanders, having attracted his insatiable curiosity, came alive again in his poetry. Their homes and lives, jobs and interests, even their speech patterns are the substance of his lines. Long Island was a living thing to Whitman, and, as in no other writing, Long Island lives in the Leaves of Grass.
Yet, Long Island born, bred and influenced, Whitman cannot be confined. As Christopher Morley said : "I call him Paumanok because I feel him especially in the earth of Long Island, but he lives every- where." Perhaps the reason for this was best expressed by John Burroughs, Whitman's friend: "I climb the Whitman mountain when [ want a big view and wide horizon and glimpse of the unknown."
If poets are dependent on locale for the substance of their art, so much more are painters. For poems need scenes mainly as sources of themes, whereas paintings need the scenes themselves. Moreover, in order for descriptive art to flourish in a given place, that region must provide a friendly atmosphere in which the artist may work.
Several factors explain why Long Island has occupied a high position in the history of American art. One is that the variety in the scenic beauty makes the area attractive to artists. A second is that, from the earliest times to the present day, art clubs, groups societies, leagues and associations, finding Islanders enthusiastic about the subject, have welcomed the opportunity to organize for cultural purposes on the Island, and to develop and produce in congenial surroundings. The third factor-a realization of the statement that "it takes a great deal of history to produce a little art"-is perfectly clear when one considers the wide historical importance of Long Island. An interpretation of these factors will reveal that Long Island art may be considered under two headings: painters from and of the Island.
Three painters from Long Island are outstanding in their fields : Feke, in portraiture; Worth, in prints; and Mount, in landscapes. Robert Feke, who was born in 1705, was one of the most famous portrait painters of his day. As a boy he ran away to sea from his Oyster Bay home, and, legend has it, learned the art of painting while a prisoner in Spain. Most of his best work was done much later in his life in Newport, Rhode Island, where many important personnages of his day "sat" for him. His portraits carry conviction. The rich and elaborate texture of a Feke canvas is strikingly lifelike. As one critic has said of him: "For a pictorial record of the people of his time, and for the intrinsic value of each carefully molded face, Feke's art is a fine art."
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Thomas Worth, not a native-born artist, has so long been associ- ated with the Island that he has become native. As a person and artist Worth had three interests: volunteer firemen rushing to fires, horses, particularly trotters, and Currier and Ives prints. His "Firemen Series", which really gained for him a nation-wide reputa- tion, reflect in a humorous, colorful way his 1834 home near a New York City firehouse. Then his Long Island associations (mostly in Islip) helped to acquaint him with horses; for, from the days of the Newmarket Course on the Hempstead Plains in the 1660s, this area has been a congenial gathering place for followers of the sport of kings. Finally, his interest in Currier and Ives seems to stem from the fact that in 1847 Nathaniel Currier issued a print of General Worth (Thomas' uncle) at the Storming of the Bishop's Palace in the Mexican War. President Harry T. Peters of the Grolier Club has pointed out the "great obligation due to Worth who actually started the enthusiasm for collections of Currier and Ives." Indeed, the lithographs of Worth himself, some of which have gone as far afield as the art gallery of England's Royal Family, are similar to the work of the "print-makers to the American people" in their wit and dignity, ability and affability. As a matter of fact, much of Worth's work was reproduced by Currier and Ives.
Worth's art, while represented at its best in lithographs of rural scenes, may also be recognized in other lines. His water colors are collectors' items-poignantly simple, charmingly blended. More- over, his talents in the line of caricature warranted from Bryant the praise of a style that had an "original, amazing incongruity." He was indeed a master of satire; humor was his field; cracker-barrel story-telling in paint his unique gift.
A third Island-born painter of the highest distinction was William S. Mount. He was the son of Thomas Mount of old Stony Brook and Setauket roots, and had three painting brothers, Henry, Shepard and Robert. Henry did landscapes; Shepard attended the National Academy of Design; while Robert and William began as sign painters. The Mount homestead at Stony Brook was actually the first studio for the four brothers, each of them contributing to its decoration.
William's canvases, of which probably the most famous is "Eel- spearing at Setauket", are mainly concerned with Long Island scenes. He who loved quiet beauty and hated city life was quite content to isolate himself in his country retreat. When he did choose to move about-in a portable studio of his own design and making-it was only to catch new glimpses of old Island scenes. His series of Long Island farmhouses for the Metropolitan Museum is a classic in American art. Mount's most significant characteristic seems to have been a subtle but perfect ability to reproduce quaint, homey, gentle, humorous Island-isms.
William Mount, who was native born, had, therefore, a natural interest in Long Island subjects. Many other noteworthy artists, from many parts of the country, have chosen Long Island as their own in the larger artistic sense. The National Academy, for example, in its listings from the year of its foundation until only 1860, gives
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recognition to twenty-five pictures with Long Island settings. In later years, after the time of the Mounts, a highly representative group of American artists have selected certain parts of Paumanok for their work. Thomas Moran was attracted by the East Hampton dunes. William Steeple Davis produced many fine water colors from the end of his wharf at Orient Point. Fishermen, water scenes by
(From watercolor by Cyril A. Lewis)
The Brookville Church
day and night, and seascapes in the contrasts of storm and calm make up the bulk of his work. Henry Diamond has made exquisite wood- cuts of old houses and rural roads in mid-Island. Charles Henry Miller was particularly fascinated by such diverse subjects as "The Graveyard of Ships at Port Washington", "East Hampton When a Hamlet", "Marshes of Great South Bay", "Gray Day on Long Island", and the famous "Autumn Oaks at Creedmoor". The Eng- lish artist, George R. Avery, did etchings of the Colyer House, Old Court House, Tryon Hall, Raynham Hall, Fire Island Light, and other notable landmarks. John Ewers, also interested in the historic, preserved on canvas that important relic, Bedell Tavern.
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Finally, Long Island has been and will be important to American art for the reason of a rather unique phenomenon-the number of art groups which have organized on the Island. One of the first and most well-known examples of this communal art was the Tile Club, founded in 1877 by F. Hopkinson Smith. The Club provided artists with a common ground of fellowship and an opportunity for the discussion of their work. The members would paint in common some- where on the Island, following their excursion with critical appraisals (as well as hearty suppers in Long Island taverns). Some excellent paintings grew out of the group, notably E. A. Abbey's Orient Point series, W. G. Bunce's boats of all kinds and descriptions, and Smith's interesting depictions of East Hampton.
This tradition continued when, in 1891, William Chase, who as a landscape painter was particularly interested in the Shinnecock Hills, founded a summer art school on the eastern end of the Island. The venture proved most successful from two standpoints: one of the excellent work which the school fostered; the other of the incentive which the group gave to the Long Island art school-colony movement.
Today, numerous associations, like the Art League of Nassau . County, fostered by artist Cyril A. Lewis and the art centers in the various Long Island colleges, are carrying on the rewarding practice of group art work. This factor, plus the kind and number of the art colonies now so active during the summer months, has made art popular on Long Island. And even if this were not so, the Island itself would probably retain enough of her natural charm still to attract the individual artist.
Yes, Long Island has been able to supply her creative artists with the locale necessary to the substance of their art. Poets and painters alike need natural beauty, variety, charm, tradition, proper balance of people and space, a combination of activity and solitude-in a word, the "matter" of culture. Because Long Island has such a matter, the Muses of poetry and painting, and their charges, have spent many happy hours in the artistically fortunate land "between the city and the sea".
CHAPTER XL
A Brief History of the Long Island Rail Road DAVID ROBINSON GEORGE Publicity Representative, Long Island Rail Road
B OTH LONG ISLAND and the Long Island Rail Road have grown mightily since 1834, when the railroad was chartered by the State of New York. In the succeeding century, their develop- ments have been closely linked; and similarly, their futures are dependent upon each other.
The first railroad on the Island was the Brooklyn & Jamaica, ten miles long, which was leased by the Long Island Rail Road (as the charter reads) in 1835, a year after the company's formation, for $33,000 a year, or ten per cent of the cost of building and equipping the line.
In Jamaica, where now more than 650 trains a day arrive from various directions on 14 tracks and are routed through a maze of switches with miraculous accuracy, only four trains a day arrived in 1837, when the Long Island had extended its tracks an additional 15 miles to Hicksville.
The Long Island Company had been formed with the idea of providing a faster link between New York and Boston on the Charleston-Boston trading and passenger route, which then required the use of Commodore Vanderbilt's Sound steamers, a trip taking 16 hours. The Old Colony Railroad, between Boston and Providence, had extended its tracks down to Stonington, Conn., and the Long Island's sponsors had wanted, at first, to build a railroad on the mainland from New York to Stonington.
But surveying expeditions had found the hills and rivers of Con- necticut unconquerable, and the backers were forced to turn to the alternative plan for a more level route from New York to Greenport, thence by ferry to Stonington, where passengers and freight would be put aboard the Old Colony trains. With this in mind, the Long Island Company was formed, the Brooklyn & Jamaica rented and construction started on the 85-mile line from Jamaica to Greenport. The tracks had been extended to Hicksville when the financial panic of 1837 compelled the company to cease building.
Operating but two trains each way a day and reduced to picking up passengers at crossroads to get much-needed revenue, the Long Island was sinking in a mire of debt and about to disappear when the State of New York came to the rescue with a loan of $100,000.
Construction was resumed immediately, and by 1841 the tracks had been extended to Farmingdale; Suffolk Station (near present Brentwood) was reached in 1842; Millville, now Yaphank, in 1843, and Greenport in 1844. The new route to Boston was put into effect and promptly hailed as a magnificent achievement, in that it reduced the 16-hour water trip by half.
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The completion of the line to Greenport was the occasion of a monster celebration. On Saturday, July 27, 1844, two days before the opening of the line for public service, a special train from Brook- lyn carried officials of the road, notables in public life, and other invited guests, numbering several hundred, to the terminus. The 95-mile trip was made in three and one-half hours, and upon arrival 500 citizens were entertained at dinner.
(Photo from Brainard Collection, Brooklyn Museum)
Long Island Rail Road Wood-burning Locomotive and Wooden Passenger Cars, near Port Jefferson, circa 1878
Speeches were made and many toasts proposed, by President George B. Fisk, and a number of others. Mr. Fisk expressed par- ticular gratitude to the Mayor and Common Council of Brooklyn for their labors on behalf of the enterprise.
The Brooklyn Eagle devoted some three thousand words of elaborately eloquent description to the trip and celebration, including the following remarkable account of the first invasion of Suffolk County by steam locomotive and train:
The interior of old Suffolk, which until that day had been sacred to the gambols of wild deer and the profound repose of whose thickets (for of trees it is comparatively innocent) had only been disturbed now and then by the sharp
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD 399
crack of the huntsman's whetting his scythe, or the low rumble of the village coach as it plodded on at the rate of five miles an hour, was saluted for the first time by the shrill whistle of the locomotive and the iron horse with lungs of brass and sinews of steel, come dashing on at a furious rate, puffing volumes of smoke and flames from his nostrils and warning the people who gazed in astonishment upon his freaks that the prediction of seers and prophets (like Fulton, Watts and Evans) was accomplished, the wild fowl startled from their banquetting in the creeks and tributaries of the Peconic arose high in the air, careered in ominous circles above the monster and his train, and then with a fearful scream, took their departure-never more to return.
The stag peered timidly out from his covert upon the approaching phantom, tossed his antlers in wonder and departed for the "Great West," and the very colts, half frantic with joy at their emancipation from drudgery, gal- loped in all the freedom of deliverance.
The bright yellow cars in use then would contrast sharply with the maroon coaches of today. Running on single, standard-gauge tracks, they were drawn by wood-burning locomotives. The first two locomotives, quaintly named Ariel and Postboy, were DeWitt Clin- tons bought originally by the Brooklyn & Jamaica in 1834, when horses were a more reliable and more popular form of motive power.
Rickety and noisy, the locomotives had four drive-wheels and smokestacks or chimneys, as they were known then, as big in diameter as their boilers. Water and wood reserves were carried behind on flatcars. Ten miles per hour was a good speed.
In the early days, extending railroad communication to a town frequently meant great wealth to the owners of property. It also resulted in many instances of excessive and unhealthy speculation, with ensuing collapse and loss. Upon learning of the decision of the Long Island Rail Road management to construct a branch to Hemp- stead, the Hempstead Inquirer, on October 26, 1836, tempered its jubilation with a note of caution. After observing that the construc- tion of the branch would place Hempstead within an hour's ride of New York and Brooklyn, and correctly predicting that the effect must be to "induce many who now occupy those cities, to come and live amongst us," the paper said :
We do not care to see much of the wilderness of specula- tion in our quiet village such as has hitherto followed the course of the railroad improvements; but if individuals can be induced to purchase lots here, and build up dwelling houses and places of business, we shall rejoice at it. Enter- prise and capital have effected wonders and we know not why a village so favorably situated as Hempstead is, in all respects, should not command its full share of both these influences.
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Passenger and mail revenues rose as traffic increased, and the Long Island's future appeared rosy, but trouble was in store. Suf- folk farmers had become bitter. Their fields and forests were set on fire by sparks from the locomotives' stacks; the clatter of the wheels, puffing of the steam and shrieking of the whistles frightened their horses and stock and disturbed their rest, and the smoke sprinkled their wives' wash with cinders.
Furthermore, the trains had the audacity to run on Sundays, desecrating the Sabbath. It was too much.
With lightning retaliation the farmers banded into groups and tore up the tracks, burned stations and pulled spikes, wrecking whole trains. The law, enlisted by the railroad, was of no assistance against vigilantes who struck in the middle of the night. As its next gesture the Long Island stopped Sunday trains, but this did not assuage the irate farmers. Not until the road's officials journeyed out to Suffolk and personally awarded cash damages to those who claimed them was peace reached.
Hardly had this been accomplished when a new group of railroad backers succeeded in overcoming the geographical difficulties of Con- necticut, and the tide of traffic at once turned. By 1850, the Long Island had been forced into receivership.
The Long Island had been carrying Manhattan-bound passengers to the old South Ferry in Brooklyn, from which they were ferried across to the Battery. Deprived of this connection, the road pro- ceeded to lay tracks from Jamaica to Long Island City, then Hunter's Point as a substitute main line. Economies were instituted, including the reduction of the Brooklyn & Jamaica rental by almost half, and the railroad was on the way to prosperity again by 1865.
In that year, Oliver Charlick, who had built other railroads, obtained control of the Long Island by unobtrusively buying a major portion of its stock. Charlick propounded policies of no new con- struction, no improvements in service and more profit. As a result, 30 local railroads were organized during the period of his control, and by 1875 two systems, the North Side and the South Side, were in operation.
Chief of the new roads was the Long Island Central, backed by A. T. Stewart, wealthy founder of Garden City. Its lines ran from Flushing to Garden City, branching off to Hempstead and Babylon. Also included in the North Side system, was a line from Long Island City, through Flushing and Whitestone to Great Neck. The South Side lines ran from Babylon to Patchogue, from Valley Stream to Hempstead and Rockaway Beach and from Fresh Pond to Long Island City.
By this time the Long Island, in addition to its main line between Long Island City and Greenport, had built branches from Jamaica to Far Rockaway, from Winfield to Flushing, from Mineola to Hemp- stead and Locust Valley, from Manorville to Sag Harbor and from Hicksville to Port Jefferson.
Such intensive competition induced rate wars which brought all three systems near failure. The Havemeyer and Poppenhausen inter- ests successively got control of first the Long Island and then the
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD 401
North and South Side systems, but the high local road leases brought about a receivership.
At this point, Austin Corbin, a financier, bought the combined Long Island systems with money from Boston and London, and pro- ceeded to improve them and replace equipment until the Long Island had again become a leading railroad.
During the period of Corbin's control, from 1880 until his death in 1896, the Long Island paid dividends, but Corbin's backers were far from sufficiently rewarded, for they had planned to have the rail- road feed a system of resorts they proposed to develop.
About this time, a great feat of engineering was planned. It was proposed to tunnel the East River from Flatbush Avenue Station into New York City, thus freeing the commuters from their depend- ence on ferries and bridges. This was not carried out because of the extension of the New York City subway system under the East River.
In 1900, in connection with its plans for tunneling the Hudson River and constructing a station in the heart of Manhattan, the Pennsylvania Railroad acquired a majority of the stock of the Long Island. It is by reason of this fact that the Long Island Rail Road, since 1910, has enjoyed its present New York passenger terminal in the centrally located Pennsylvania Station.
The work of electrifying the western portion of the Long Island Rail Road system was commenced in 1904 and the first trial opera- tion was in 1905. Six sections were successively opened for public use in 1905 and 1906.
In addition to its extensive electrification, the Long Island Rail Road was first among American railroads to use steel passenger cars. This was in 1905, when it commenced electric operation. It was first, also, to eliminate all wooden passenger equipment, and in 1927 became the first railroad in the country to operate every one of its steam and electric passenger trains with an exclusive complement of steel cars.
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