Touring the L. I. Motor Parkway.
This is yet another page to cover additional information and photographs of this
interesting old highway; see also my Automotive,
Chrysler, Dudgeon (really!),
Mercedes, and SS and
JAGUAR car pages and other related pages.
A Motor Parkway Panel has been convened to keep the
LIMP alive in situ and in minds and museums.
There is also a lot of automotive material on my ORDNANCE
and HISTORY pages.
Also, if you like automotive history, see the links on the
Automotive page.
RoW = Right-of-Way.
LONG ISLAND MOTOR PARKWAY - continued
OLD BETHPAGE AREA Update.
(moved from Page 6 - 18 Apr 00)
Refer to Page 2 for the OBVR Bridge.
I had promised to revisit the Round Swamp Road crossing in western Suffolk
(except, of course, that it's in eastern Nassau!); there is a complete
Parkway section there that I missed when I worked nearby and on my first big LIMP
field trips on 24 Sep 99 and 01 Oct 99! Panel Associate Chris Lindley put me on
to this part; I had misremembered the crossing area (as noted on Page 2, at
Bridge at Old Bethpage Village Restoration),
placing it too far south around Claremont Road, although correctly remembering it
running through the Battle Row Campground. I went back briefly on
01 Apr 00 (no foolin'!) and drove around the area again, this time really checking very
carefully in the obviously-named little cluster of streets, Vanderbilt Lane and Motor
Lane, at Fairway Drive, to no avail. Then I parked on Bethpage-Spagnoli Road,
just east of the interesection with Round Swamp Road, i.e. - immediately south of the
Old Bethpage Village Restoration. There is
an embankment along the south side and Chris had mentioned such, so up and over
I went but no LIMP. However, through the dense underbrush at the top, I
could make out the Battle Row Campground (now accessible from the north
end of Winding Road). Not having as many brambles to pick through, I headed
due south and almost fell over this broken guardrail post, oddly high on the hillside
north of what quite obviously was a bit of the LIMP RoW immediately north of the park
office; seeing a park employee come out of the office, I asked about the old parkway
and he, most obligingly, walked me a few yards west and showed me two concrete
posts set back a short distance in the woods north of the picnic area grilles (I have
artificially highlighted this photo to show the two posts). They are
perfectly-ordinary triangular boundary posts but are set in heavy pricker bushes and
not worth the agony of closer inspection. Walking to the left (west), the LIMP
RoW angles off ever so slightly north of the park road, to a stone barricade; once
there and turning 180° (east) one can just barely make out (through the trees
beyond the bright green park power transformers) the twin brick stacks of the County
incinerator on Winding Road at the far end of a bucolic scene of the RoW on
surprisingly rolling terrain:
(All photos 01 Apr 00 by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]
Now, I walked over to the barricade and back twice, checking for anything of note and
took this picture of original concrete at the center of the road (it usually only shows at
the edges), facing east about midway, and then of another guardrail post, near and
slightly northeast of the barricade, again far from the roadway, north and deep in
bushes over a streambed. Up close and facing the barricade, here is the
impenetrable bramble patch looking westward over the stones in the direction of
Round Swamp Road and then the RoW looking eastward over the same stones and
showing evidence of old LIMP paving dug up years back when the barricade was
erected (probably when the campground was improved):
Walking back eastward from the barricade again, at the top of the gentle rise back at
the park office and the green transformers, there are the twin stacks through the
trees, and then quite obvious across the trees, and then the end of clean pavement
just east of the office (note the white sign as reference in all three photos).
Lastly, we enter the overgrown section heading northeast to Bethpage-Spagnoli
Road (note a patch of exposed pavement) and then the last few yards with
Bethpage-Spagnoli Road showing [a yellow municipal garbage truck with a blue cab
(Glen Cove's?) visible at the end of the RoW - do you have any idea how many shots I
ripped off before I caught something visible?]:
Smashing through brush (minimal prickers) northwesterly along the RoW in the
previous pictures, we come at last to Bethpage-Spagnoli Road, only a few
dozen yards east of where I parked (not bad for dead reckoning), stand on the
southern verge and shoot across to the obvious RoW embankment, then cross
(VERRRRY carefully!) and shoot through the chain link fence of the OBVR along the N-S
RoW embankment, and finally scramble along the fence a few yards westerly and try
to show the embankment angling due north into the Restoration (there must have
been quite some twisting in there to end up on the surviving OBVR bridge heading
eastward!):
Crossing back over to the south side of Bethpage-Spagnoli Road, here is the
ingnominous end of the RoW at the roadway and then, getting back in the trusty
Neon and driving easterly a half-mile, a view of the eastern end of Bethpage-Spagnoli
Road at Route 110 [(Broad Hollow Road) - and thereby hangs a tail!]:
(All photos 01 Apr 00 by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]
The road immediately S of OBVR, Bethpage-Spagnoli Road, is actually Bethpage-Sweet
Hollow Road on the 1967 Nassau Hagstrom's map and is only such at the W end from
the triple intersection with Bethpage Road and Round Swamp Road to the crossing
where Claremont Road used to run S and Winding Road (now Way) used to run N
(basically almost the LIMP RoW). Then it is Winding Road from there E to where
Winding Way still runs south and then Bethpage-Sweet Hollow Road again, E to Route
110. The old Winding Road made a zig-zag immediately S of the bridge, just
outside the current OBVR perimeter fence. Whether the OBVR bridge crossed
Claremont or Winding Roads (or another) will require old maps, ca, 1908, to resolve.
OBVR was only started in 1970.
ROUTE 110 SAND PITS AREA Update.
(a.k.a. Errata - Mea Culpa! Mea Maxima Culpa!)
(moved from Page 6 - 18 Apr 00)
Well, look at that last photo, above! I drove north and south past this spot on
110 almost twice daily (and sometimes much more than just twice) for some ten years
or more and never realized it was the LIMP RoW, my zeal blinding me to the fact that
the LILCO (now LIPA) power lines diverged from the LIMP RoW back at Bethpage
State Park! The ridge I so carefully (and painfully) followed from the southeast
end of OBVR is NOT the LIMP!!! I realized most graphically
how far off I was when Bob Miller showed a slide of a private one-lane bridge under
the LIMP which stood (or still stands) inside the sandpits, which are just north of
Bethpage-Spagnoli Road; the ridge is SOUTH of the road! Sitting at
that red light (you can see it), I saw only the mound ahead of me on the west side of
110 and thought, "Oh, no; that's the RoW!" It's not; see the steel barrier to
the left (north), just to the right (south) of the big bank building? That's it!
More on this stretch, just west of the Duryea Road bridge site, in my next adventure.
That didn't quite happen; instead, on a fluke, I jumped past the 110 and Maxess
abutment areas to Wheatley Heights and Half Hollow Hills, as follows:
WHEATLEY HEIGHTS/HALF HOLLOW HILLS AREA
The Wheatley Heights/Half Hollow Hills area, east of PinelawnRoad/Wellwood
Avenue* and north of Colonial Springs Road and south of the LIE
(Long Island Expressway - I495) is of great personal interest to me; I had never
bothered to really investigate what I thought was barren, dead-flat s
crubland while I worked only a mile-and-a-half to the west for 17 years. The
last time I really looked around in that area was ca. 1976 and it was all wilderness
and farms; now it's all built up with up-scale homes. Well, was I ever surprised
when I detoured from Farmingdale on my way NE to Northport ca. 16 Jul 00, followed
the LILCO/LIPA high-tension pole line along the S side of CSR to where it cuts NE
across CSR about a quarter-mile east of Wellwood, and turned north on
Northcote Road!
* - The Huntington/Babylon town line, running W-E, separates Wheatley
Heights on the S from Half Hollow Hills on the N; CSR demarcates the change from
Pinelawn Road (N) to Wellwood Avenue (S).
There was the LIMP@, replete with pavement and posts,
stretching away ENE UPHILL as far as I could see! The intervening
week was all torrential downpours so, on 31 Jul 00, under darkly lowering skies, I
took my trusty digital there and here is what I saw:
First, to my left (W), about a block north of CSR, was the obvious crossing of the RoW
(actually, this time, I crossed the road and climbed the embankment and here's the
view looking WSW back towards Pinelawn/Wellwood), BUT, to my right (E), across a
thick hedge, is that astonishing vista!
(All photos 01 Apr 00 by and © 20000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]
You can barely make out a small guard or ticket shack in the near right and a small
grayish-whitish "blob" in the middle distance, which was a moving vehicle.
Here's an over-pixelled enlargement of that "blob", which was actually a full-size van
(so those "posts' were obviously NOT such - FAR too big!).
Next, I climbed up on the car sill to get a better view over the hedge; you can see the
guard/ticket shack in the lower right:
{no thumbnail on enlarged detail on left}
That van and another vehicle were running up and down the road and then vanished
past the shack to the near right (S), so I decided to find how they got there. I
retraced my way S on Northcote, hung a left (E) on CSR, and turned in left (N) through
the open gate of the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts (do NOT
emulate my example!), driving N to the shack and the RoW, where I took a photo
looking from the gate at the foot of the hill, uphill to the ENE. Driving up the hill,
we see, finally and for sure, that the "posts" are, in fact, telephone poles with
visibility bands around them.:
Proceeding up further, we come to the end of the paving; I get a strong feeling that
this road may just be a service road for Usdan and that the actual RoW may well be
to the ESE under the newer set of LIPA poles. Turning the car around, we can
see endlessly across Northcote towards Wellwood [where the Row probably cut
between Haddon Hall and Leighton Court, both dead ends facing each other, often a
dead (if you'll pardon the pun) giveaway]:
Next, I drove back down the hill, only to be stopped by the driver of that van; it seems
I was inadvertently trespassing on private property. The Usdan Center is
NOT a public park as I had assumed and the guard and his colleague in the
other vehicle had been chasing vandals who'd broken into one of the Usdan buildings!
In the time I'd been exploring, the gate had been locked and I had to be escorted off
the property. Oops; sorry 'bout that! Once back on CSR, I headed east
to see if there was a PUBLIC way up to the RoW but there is not, so I
continued to Conklin Avenue, turned left (N) and continued up to where it
becomes Bagatelle Road.
@ - There's only one problem here! This is NOT the LIMP!
As unmistakeable as it may seem; it's wrong.
From the end of the Usdan stretch, the RoW appears (on my 1990 Suffolk Hagstrom's)
to run as the south boundary of the western half of the small park south of
Farmington and west of Bagatelle and then the northwesterly curve forming the
southern boundary of the eastern half of that park. Then it appears that it
should run along the east side of Farmington, crossing Bagatelle opposite and
between Wilmington and Threepence Drives and running to the east of Dix Woods
Drive, through the public school grounds and across the LIE, probably running
between Lone Hill Place and Broad Oak Lane (again facing dead ends), through the
SW corner of Fox Lane, across Melissa Court, and so to Half Hollow Road and the
so-called Vanderbilt Parkway.
Back to the real world. Just S of the LIE, between Threepence ("Thruppence")
and Wilmington Drives (as I recall), the RoW crosses Bagatelle, here viewed WSW
and ENE:
Driving up to the school at Bagatelle and the LIE (Exit 50), there is nothing obvious to
see and, turning right (E) on the LIE service road reveals that the verges have been
completely regraded with Connecticut Walls, so absolutely nothing shows!
Continuing E to the first crossing, it turns out to be Half Hollow Road.
DING! - Half Hollow Road? - Hey! That's where the extant LIMP starts
out easterly as "Vanderbilt Parkway"! Turning left (WNW) and running
some ¼-mile to the east on HHR, some 200 yards north of the LIE, we come to
Vanderbilt Parkway on our right with this sign and an aluminum light pole, a
fireplug, and a walk signal with pushbutton control, on the NW corner, a far cry from
the old LIMP, indeed! After going back and running W along the N service road
back to Burr's Lane, finding nothing again but Connecticut Walls, I retraced
my path to Half Hollow Road, where a short run E on Vanderbilt Parkway takes one to
the Half Hollow schools complex on the right (S) and the library on the left (N), where
the historic marker shown elsewhere on this site is located (repeated here):
(Left photo 01 Apr 00 by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
Right photo 17 May 00 by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]
Historical marker in front of Half Hollow Hills Community Library
(55 Vanderbilt Parkway, Dix Hills, north side,
opposite Half Hollow Hills School)
I was all wet about some of this area (as noted @, and apparently
still may be). It did, however, go through a welter of small roads until it came
to the intersections of Colonial Springs Road, Bagatelle Road and
the Long Island Expressway which is about where the RoW hit Half
Hollow Road, where the13-mile extant stretch of LIMP RoW starts, as
noted above.
More about this area appears (as of 08 Apr 2002) on the
WHEATLEY HEIGHTS/HALF HOLLOW HILLS AREA -
revisited section of the Suffolk County page and (as of 28/29 Jan 2003) on
LIMP page A.
(29 Jan 03)
Motor Parkway Panel member Tom Walsh contributed an
article on the LIMP for Larry Graff's "
your About.com Guide to: Long Island, NY".
Motor Parkway Panel member Steve Anderson was
quoted in a NEWSDAY article by Sidney C. Shaer, "Highway Hopes That Faded",
on page A20 (Nassau edition) of the Friday, 05 Nov 99, issue, in the "Long Island -
Our Future" series, "Predictions from the past that haven't come true ... yet".
Motor Parkway Panel convenor Sam
Berliner contributed the cover story on the LIMP (especially as it traversed the
narrow central portion of the Town
of Oyster Bay - through Central Park/Bethpage) for the Winter 2000 issue
FREEHOLDER, "The
History Magazine of the Town of Oyster Bay", the publication of the
Oyster Bay Historical Society, of which he is a member.
A quadruple-threat site is John Woodson's
Stanley Steamers site; all about Stanley, Doble, White, and other steamcars,
steam engines, steam locomotives, and steamboats - what more could one given to
the vapors want? Well, one could want a picture of the 1906 Stanley Steamer
Vanderbilt Cup racer; yup, it's there (by C. Benson) - the black, coffin-nosed, beauty
with driver and mechanic aboard.
There is no map (yet) on Mike Natale's fascinating "
The Toll Road Map Master List" site.
Because the Main Page overloaded, please visit
Continuation Pages 1A, et seq.
THUMBS UP!
THUMBS UP! - Support your local police, fire, and emergency personnel!
S. Berliner, III
To contact S. Berliner, III, please click here.
of this series of Long Island Motor Parkway pages.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III - 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 - All rights reserved.
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[If my discs weren't floppy, my photos wouldn't be LIMP!]
times since the counter was installed.
