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| Click on a section of the map above to enlarge that area. |
| to view the entire map as one large file (7.3 megs). |
This documents a historical snapshot of the birth of modern
Suburbs . As American military personnel returned from
World War II , the
United States underwent a dramatic population shift from cities to suburban areas. One of the first regions to experience this suburban population explosion was on
Long Island , an area east of
New York City which had been mostly rural up to that time.
The first major suburban developments were at
Levittown in
Nassau County but the
Town Of Huntington in western
Suffolk County was also feeling the effects of a shifting populalation. This map documents a time before this sudden population growth and the attempts of both local and state govenments to plan for the future.
The Township of Huntington is a large area of northren Suffolk County on Long Island, encompassing the followning
Town s,
Village s,
Hamlets , and
Census-designated Places .
- One of the most interesting feature of this map is a proposed east-west highway or major thorofare that would have cut through Cold Spring Harbor and Huntington Station, connecting with Pulaski Road in Greenlawn. This proposed highway or major thorofare was never built. Had this road been built, it may have resulted in a greatly different landscape of Northern Long Island from what we know today.
- Another street proposed on this map in red pencil is a second east-west road through the heart of downtown Huntington, parallel to Main Street/ 25A . This proposed road was indeed built {Link without Title} , eventually becoming Lieutenant General Frank Libutti Way, connecting with the existing Nathan Hale Drive. Also of note is that Nathan Hale Drive used to split into Wood Place and back into Nathan Hale Drive before connecting with West Main Street, but Wood Place was eliminated and Nathan Hale Drive was straightened to go between the original locations of both roads.
- The Northern State Parkway enters Huntington Township but it does not yet reach Smithtown Township to the east.
- Although construction of the Long Island Expressway began in 1939, there are no references to its future route through the southern part of Huntington Township.
- Half of the planned development on Multi Family Site 4 (located in map section G/H-4) was utilized for the current Huntington High School.
- Lilco's Northport Power Station is not yet built. The four enormous smokestacks from this oil-burning electric plant (now operated by LIPA ) can be seen from as far away as Connecticut , across Long Island Sound .
During the early
1980s a division of the New York State Department of Housing Development was relocated to a new building. The workers were told to discard file cabinet after file cabinet of old paperwork rather than have it moved to the new location. This map was saved from the New York State Department of Housing and Urban Development archives.
