The American Guide Series stands as one of the most ambitious literary projects ever undertaken by the United States government, and the volume dedicated to New York: A Guide to the Empire State remains a cornerstone of that collection. Published originally in 1938 under the auspices of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), a division of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), this guide captures Long Island not as the suburban sprawl we know today, but as a patchwork of fishing villages, Gold Coast mansions, potato farms, and nascent aviation fields. Within its dense pages, the section covering Long Island offers a fascinating time capsule of a region on the cusp of radical transformation. It serves as both a historical document and a surprisingly usable travel narrative for the modern explorer willing to look past the strip malls and parkways to find the bones of the island’s past.
The Federal Writers’ Project and the Birth of the Series
To understand the American Guide Series New York Long Island section, one must first understand the desperate context of its creation. The Great Depression had devastated the American workforce, leaving writers, editors, historians, and researchers unemployed alongside factory hands and farmers. The FWP was conceived not merely as a make-work program, but as a cultural salvage operation. Under the direction of Henry Alsberg, the project employed over 6,000 people at its peak, tasking them with creating a comprehensive "self-portrait of America.
The New York City unit was the largest and most contentious in the nation. And the Long Island section—covering Nassau and Suffolk counties, plus the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens (geographically part of the island but politically distinct)—required a herculean effort of fact-checking, driving tours, and archival research. Think about it: the New York: A Guide to the Empire State volume was a massive undertaking, running over 700 pages. It was a hotbed of literary talent and political friction, employing future luminaries such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, John Cheever, and Zora Neale Hurston. The writers weren't just listing landmarks; they were defining a regional identity for a place that was rapidly losing its rural character.
Long Island in 1938: A Landscape in Transition
Reading the Long Island tours today produces a distinct cognitive dissonance. The guide describes a Hempstead Plains that was already shrinking but still vast enough to be called "the only natural prairie east of the Alleghenies." Today, that prairie is largely paved over by the Nassau Coliseum, Hofstra University, and endless housing developments like Levittown—which didn't even exist when the guide went to press.
The guide meticulously documents the Gold Coast of the North Shore, the stretch of Long Island Sound shoreline where the titans of the Gilded Age—Vanderbilts, Guggenheims, Morgans, and Pratts—built their "cottages.Even so, high taxes, the income tax, and the scarcity of servants were already forcing the breakup of these massive properties. They note the opulence of Oheka Castle (Otto Kahn’s 109-room chateau) and the landscaped perfection of Planting Fields (the Coe estate), but they also record the beginning of the end for this lifestyle. The guide inadvertently serves as an inventory of structures that would soon become museums, universities (like LIU Post and St. Day to day, " The writers approach these estates with a mix of architectural reverence and subtle New Deal class consciousness. John’s), or rubble.
People argue about this. Here's where I land on it Most people skip this — try not to..
Concurrently, the South Shore receives attention for its maritime culture. Freeport, Patchogue, and Greenport are described as working waterfronts. Here's the thing — the guide highlights the Great South Bay’s oyster industry, specifically the famed Blue Points, noting the beds were "among the most productive in the world. On the flip side, " It captures the rhythm of the baymen’s lives—the dragger boats, the clam shacks, the summer resort hotels catering to city dwellers fleeing the heat. Much of this world has vanished or been gentrified beyond recognition, making the guide’s matter-of-fact descriptions of "clam bakes on the beach" and "fishing parties" poignant records of a lost economy.
The Motor Tours: The Structural Backbone
The defining feature of the American Guide Series was the "Motor Tour.That said, " These were turn-by-turn driving itineraries designed to get tourists off the main arteries and onto the back roads. For Long Island, the guide outlines several key routes that structure the reader's understanding of the geography Surprisingly effective..
Tour 1 (The North Shore) runs from the Queens border out to Orient Point. It threads through Flushing, Great Neck, Port Washington, Roslyn, Oyster Bay (highlighting Sagamore Hill, Theodore Roosevelt’s "Summer White House"), Huntington, Smithtown, and Port Jefferson. The directions are hyper-specific: "Turn left on Main St.; pass the old mill pond..." Following this tour today is an exercise in urban archaeology. The "country roads" are now four-lane highways (Route 25A), but the landmarks—the Raynham Hall Museum in Oyster Bay, the St. John’s Episcopal Church in Cold Spring Harbor, the Whaling Museum in Cold Spring Harbor—remain anchors of continuity That's the part that actually makes a difference..
Tour 2 (The South Shore) follows the Montauk Highway (Route 27A) from the Queens line to Montauk Point. This route showcases the barrier beach communities: Rockaway, Long Beach, Jones Beach (then a brand-new Robert Moses masterpiece, described in glowing detail regarding its "Italianate" bathhouses and innovative traffic circles), Fire Island, and the Hamptons. The guide treats the Hamptons—Southampton, East Hampton, Bridgehampton—not as the celebrity playgrounds of today, but as historic settlements with "windmills moved from the common to private estates" and "old houses with gambrel roofs." It notes the artist colony in East Hampton and the "potato fields" of Bridgehampton, a crop that was then the economic engine of the East End Simple, but easy to overlook..
Tour 3 (The Central Spine) cuts down the middle via Jericho Turnpike (Route 25) and Middle Country Road. This was the "potato belt." The guide emphasizes the agricultural output: "Long Island produces more potatoes per acre than any other section of the country." It describes the Central Pine Barrens not as a preserved watershed, but as "scrub oak and pitch pine" land of little value, useful mostly for hunting and charcoal burning—a perspective that highlights how ecological values have shifted dramatically in 80 years.
Aviation: The Island’s Future Written in the Sky
Perhaps the most prescient section of the Long Island guide deals with aviation. The guide devotes significant space to Roosevelt Field, Mitchel Field, and Floyd Bennett Field (technically Brooklyn, but functionally Long Island). Consider this: in 1938, Long Island was the undisputed Cradle of Aviation. That said, it recounts Lindbergh’s 1927 departure for Paris from Roosevelt Field with the reverence of a sacred text. It notes the commercial airlines operating out of Floyd Bennett and the Army Air Corps at Mitchel Surprisingly effective..
The writers understood that the flat, treeless Hempstead Plains—once the domain of the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome—made the island a natural airfield. They could not have predicted the scale of the post-war aviation industry (Grumman, Republic) that would turn Bethpage and Farmingdale into industrial powerhouses, nor the eventual closure of these very fields to become shopping malls (Roosevelt Field Mall) and university campuses. Yet, their detailed logging of hangars, runways, and flight schools captures the exact moment the island’s destiny pivoted from horizontal (farming/fishing) to vertical (flight/industry).
