Vanderbilt: Coastal Playland

On Thursday, May 18th, the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum will host Kara Murphy Schlichting, a noted historian of New York City’s environmental history, for an evening lecture on the history of the Long Island Sound as a place for urban recreation and leisure.

Schlichting’s lecture will draw heavily from her 2019 book (University of Chicago). In , Schlichting turns dominant narratives about New York City’s urban expansion on their head, focusing not on Robert Moses and grand scheme planning but on the lesser-known local businesses, developers, and government officials whose efforts profoundly shaped coastal communities throughout the metropolitan region. She will explore how, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words, “the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere” came to be dominated by public parks, beaches, and resorts for an emergent middle-class. It is a fascinating story that covers the rise of the Long Island State Parks Commission an…