1946 Huntington Planning Map

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Click on a section of the map above to enlarge that area.
	Click here to view the entire map as one large file (7.3 megs).

This 1946 Huntington Planning Map 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 population. This map documents a time before this sudden population growth and the attempts of both local and state governments to plan for the future.

Contents 1 Map Coverage 2 Notable Planning Features 3 Additional Interesting Facts 4 Map History

[edit] Map Coverage

The Township of Huntington is a large area of northern Suffolk County on Long Island, encompassing the followning towns, villages, hamlets, and census-designated places.

• Asharoken [1]
• Centerport [2]
• Cold Spring Harbor [3]
• Commack [4]
• Dix Hills [5]
• East Neck [6]
• East Northport (formerly known as Larkfield) [7]
• Eatons Neck [8]
• Elwood [9]/[10]
• Fort Salonga [11] (Smithtown Township)
• Great Neck [12]
  • This name is no longer used. This area is now known as Crab Meadow.
  • This is not the Great Neck in nearby Nassau County.
• Greenlawn [13]
• Halesite [14]
• Half Hollow Hills [15]
• Huntington Village [16]
• Huntington Station [17]
• Little Plains [18]
• Little Neck [19]
• Lloyd Neck [20]
• Lower Melville [21]
• Mannetto Hills [22]
• Melville (formerly known as Sweet Hollow) [23]
• Middleville [24]
  • This name is no longer used, except for name of Middleville Junior High School
  • This is not the Middleville located in Herkimer County
• Northport [25]
• South Huntington [26]
• Vernon Valley [27]
  • This name is no longer used
• West Hills [28]
• West Neck [29]

[edit] Notable Planning Features

• 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 thoroughfare 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 [30], 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.

[edit] Additional Interesting Facts

• 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.

[edit] Map History

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.