A Missed Exit and the Back of an Envelope — a history of Jones Beach State Park
The Gateway to the World’s Greatest Seashore Playground (Jones Beach State Park, NY)
I am home for spring break and after spending a few days at a friend’s house in upstate New York, I began my drive home down the New York State Thruway. As I approach New York City, I have to a decision to make.
Do I take the Deegan or the Cross Bronx? I regrettably make the mistake of taking the latter all the way to the Throgs Neck Bridge, completely ignoring my former drivers-ed teacher who implored me to “Neva Take Da Cross Bronx!” After sitting in traffic, I eventually get off the bridge and take the Cross Island to the Northern State all the way to the Meadowbrook where I finally head south towards my home. As I approach my home, I decide to keep driving and miss my exit.
At this moment, most drivers would sigh a frustrated remark under their breath, or for us less tempered New York folk, an expletive, and get off quickly at the next exit. However, I am calm. For me, missing my exit means going back in time. Since there is no other place to get off or turn around for another four miles, I continue to drive. I drive along a beautiful park reserve on my left and a beautiful body of water on my right. I cross over a drawbridge before exchanging off the Meadowbrook onto Ocean Parkway. Less than ten minutes after missing my exit, I pass by a children’s playground, giant bath houses and finally a chance to turn around at a traffic circle. At this moment, my eyes and mind immediately fixate on a structure sitting upon that traffic circle; a beautiful maroon-brick structure. That monument was the Jones Beach Water Tower. I had reached the gateway to the World’s Greatest Seashore Playground; I had reached Jones Beach State Park.
With those images fixed in your mind I would like to pause my personal narrative and tell you a different story as I to take you back to the year 1926. Surrounded by the world’s greatest engineers and architects on a small sand bar on the Atlantic Ocean off of the south shore of Long Island, we find this story’s protagonist; Robert Moses. Moses’s controversial place in history precedes him. Some like to call him the Master Builder while others prefer Power Broker. Some despise him as an out-of-touch racist who preferred cars to humans while others hail him as a brilliant visionary who revolutionized one of the world’s greatest cities. Regardless of your views on the Machiavellian Moses, in the year 1926 few people were more powerful in New York state government than the then-head of the Long Island State Parks Commission (LISPC).
Standing on that sand bar, much to the surprise of everyone with him, Jones took to out an envelope and on the back began to illustrate his ultimate goal for Jones Beach. Using X’s Moses first drew out two large bathhouses that would be connected on the beach by a gorgeous boardwalk. Connecting the two bathhouses on the other side would be an Ocean Parkway that would end in a traffic circle where people could exit into parking lots that would fit 10,000 cars. Along the boardwalk, between the bathhouses would be affordable restaurants for dining, bandstands for entertainment and off on the side would be outdoor games for recreation. The talented architects surrounding Moses were in shock. And rightfully so. Remember, this is still just a sand bar and Moses is drawing on an envelope. Only, Moses was not done yet. He still needed the centerpiece for his beach. The men surrounding him suggested a lighthouse, a traditional landmark to accompany a beach. However, it was clear at this point Moses already knew what he was going to do and their opinions mattered little. Moses decided, against common thinking, that it would be a water tower. Modeled after a church bell tower in Venice, this would become the Jones Beach Water Tower.[2] The back of that envelope would be the blueprint to the World’s Greatest Seashore Playground. If this was the story of Moses the Prophet, then that sand bar was his Sinai and that envelope was his Holy Book.
The first thing drawn on that prophetic envelope between the two X’s that marked the bathhouses, was an Ocean Parkway that was accompanied with massive parking lots that had capacities for 10,000 cars. 1926 was right in the midst of a national movement that historian Chris Wells has labeled “Creating Car Country,” and Moses knew it too.[3] One cannot truly understand the story of Jones Beach without first understanding the nature of Car Country.
This was part of a national movement in the 1920’s to build parkways to connect people to nature. Stephen Mather, the head of the National Park Service at the time, advocated for the using the “medium of the automobile” to access parks.[4] In 1921, Mather held a National Conference on State Parks that established the idea that in order for State Parks to be successful they needed to be accompanied by an organized system of State Parkways.[5] The many parkways that Moses built out on Long Island were the first examples of the paths out of town. This was also the product of the New York context too. New York was already a leader of car country with many of the first asphalt-paved highways already built by 1913.[6] In addition, it is clear that by the early 1920’s New York City urbanites were already traveling via car to Long Island, they were just traveling on old roads with nowhere to go. Well, Jones Beach gave them somewhere to go and Moses would give them the way to get there. The Southern State Parkway was finished by 1927 and the Wantagh State Parkway, then known as the Jones Beach Causeway, opened the same day as the park on August 4, 1929.[7] Still as beach attendance arose, traffic became miserable. The density of traffic on the Jones Beach Causeway increased from 330,000 in 1929 to 1.4 million by 1931. To combat the traffic Moses would build the Northern State Parkway parallel to the Southern State in 1933 and the Meadowbrook parallel to the Wantagh in 1934.[8] Finally, all of these parkways were paths out of town. In this case, the town was a city with a population over 12 million,[9] and the path led to the famous Ocean Parkway, which would end, and loop back in a traffic circle.
The next illustrations on that envelope represented ideas of recreation from affordable dining to entertainment and athletics. Moses’s ideas on recreation are also better understood within the context of the national trends. Bred out of a debate on recreation in that same National Conference on State Parks of 1921 came the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation in 1924.[10] This 1920’s movement of using State Parks as recreational facilities is a sharp contrast to the 19th century ideas of nature.
On one hand were the romantics who wanted to preserve the US landscape and in doing so, set up national parks such as Yellowstone in 1872. On the other side of the equation, was Niagara Falls, where picturesque and sublime elements of nature were taken over by tourism, commercialization and industry. It was out of these two conflicting ideas that the outdoor recreation movement of the 1920’s born.
These movements are also mirrored in New York state history.[11] [12] On the romantics’ side was Frederick Law Olmstead’s Central Park in New York City, which was completed a year after Yellowstone in 1873, and was a site where the picturesque and sublime elements of nature were preserved for New Yorkers to experience.[13] On the other hand, was Coney Island, a beach park in Brooklyn that, around the same time of Niagara Falls, became overrun with commercialization and tourism as amusement parks were erected.[14] By the 1930’s both locations were considered dirty and unkempt.
Somewhere between Yellowstone and Niagara Falls, between Central Park and Coney Island, emerged Jones Beach State Park. The restaurants and open cafés on the boardwalk were nice but affordable and most importantly local, not national chains. The Marine Theater built in 1930 would rebuilt in 1953 to be state of the art. Led by Guy Lombardo, the famous executive producer of the theater from ’53 to 1974, Jones Beach became associated with “Good, Clean entertainment.”[15] The park became renowned for its athletic facilities. From Baseball fields, to shuffleboard courts, rollerblading rinks, archery arenas, and a children’s playground the places to play were endless.[16]
The last thing Moses drew on the envelope was the Jones Beach Water Tower. This was quintessential Moses; turning an environmental necessity, that is usually an eyesore, into a thing of beauty. The beach is littered with these examples. Bathhouses at beaches were known as ugly wooden structures that became unsanitary atrocities. Moses would build his out of brick and stone, accompanied with green-tinted glass windows and a terrace to cap it all off.[17] From the tube-shaped garbage cans to the hand drawn signage, the park’s nautical feel complemented, instead of distracted, from the true beauty of nature at the park; the actual beach. With vast amounts of sand and beautiful Atlantic Ocean water, nature itself was still at the forefront of the Jones Beach experience.
Returning once again to my story, as I see that Jones Beach Water Tower, I pull into one of those expansive giant Jones Beach parking lots on a cold winter day and for the first time see it’s enormity. My mind is swarmed with memories of my parents ushering me into the car at 11 A.M. on a the first days of summer so we could beat the crowd to Jones Beach Stadium 6 parking lot. As I walk down from bathhouse to bathhouse I notice the shuffleboard court and the playground and have memories of playing sports with my brother. I look to the North and see the giant Nikon Beach Theater and remember experiencing my first concert there in 2003. I even notice the nautical-themed garbage cans and the signage that remains unchanged from the photos I have seen from the 1950’s. Finally, I sit down on the sand, look out into the Ocean and realize I am reliving memories drawn out by Moses on that envelope almost 90 years ago. I drove on so many parkways and bridges built by Moses to access the beach that the reading of my route (see first paragraph) sounds more like an Ode to Moses. I then parked in those massive parking lots he proposed in the midst of the Car Country. From there I travelled into 1920’s ideas of recreation from athletics to dining and entertainment. But ultimately, I was there for nature. I was there for the Ocean. I stood up, walked towards the Jones Beach Water Tower and got in my car. Just like that, I said goodbye to the World’s Greatest Seashore Playground. I had missed my exit and three hours later, it was time to drive home.
Resources:
[2] Robert Caro. The Power Broker. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1974. Pp. 222–224
[3] Chris Wells. Car Country. University of Washington Press: Seattle and London, 2012. Pp. 123–201
[4] Chris Wells. Car Country. University of Washington Press: Seattle and London, 2012. Pp. 220
[5] Rebecca Conrad, “National Conference on State Parks,” George Wright Forum, 1997. Pp. 28–43
[6] Chris Wells. Car Country. University of Washington Press: Seattle and London, 2012. Pp. 77
[7] Hilary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City. W.W. Norton & Company: New York & London, 2007.
[8] John Hanc, Jones Beach. The Globe Pequot Press: Guilford, CT, 2007. Pp. 3
[9] http://home.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/census/1920_total_pop.pdf
[10] http://livinglandscapeobserver.net/national-conference-on-outdoor-recreation/
[11] Of course, Niagara Falls is a part of New York State and the first State Park. However, I am focusing on downstate New York.
[12] John F. Sears. Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century. Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1998. Pp. 184
[13] Hilary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City. W.W. Norton & Company: New York & London, 2007.
[14] John Hanc, Jones Beach. The Globe Pequot Press: Guilford, CT, 2007. Pp. 12
[15] John Hanc, Jones Beach. The Globe Pequot Press: Guilford, CT, 2007. Pp. 12
[16] Photo of Jones Beach in New York Historical Society.
[17] Robert Caro. The Power Broker. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1974. Pp. 222–224