Jones Beach State Park  

Jones Beach State Park (colloquially “Jones Beach”) is a state park located at Long Island City, New York in Nassau County. It is located in southern Nassau County on Jones Beach Island, a barrier island linked to Long Island by the Meadowbrook State Parkway, Wantagh State Parkway, and Ocean Parkway. The park, 6.5 miles (10.5 km) in length, is renowned for its beaches (except the beach on Zachs Bay, which faces the open Atlantic Ocean) and furnishes one of the most popular summer recreational locations in New York metropolitan area. It is the most popular and heavily visited beach on the East Coast, with six million visitors per year. Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater, an outdoor arena in the park, is a popular musical and concert venue. The park also includes a two-mile (3.2 km) boardwalk. It once featured dining and catering facilities that were popular sites for private parties and weddings, though these have been shut down. Jones Beach is named after Major Thomas Jones, a major in the Queens County militia in the 17th century, who established a whaling station on the outer beach near the site of the present park.

History

The park was created during Robert Moses’ administration as President of the Long Island State Park Commission as part of the development of parkways on Long Island. Moses’s first major public project, Jones Beach, is free from housing developments and private clubs and is open to the general public. Several homes on High Hill Beach were barged further down the island to West Gilgo Beach to make room for the park.

When Moses’ group first surveyed Jones Island, it was swampy and only two feet (0.61 m) above sea level; the island frequently became completely submerged during storms. To create the park, huge dredgers worked day and up to midnight to bring sand from the bay bottom, eventually bringing the island to 12 feet (3.7 m) above sea level. Another problem was the wind—the fine silver beach sand would blow horribly, making the workers miserable and making the beach’s use as a recreational facility unlikely. Moses sent landscape architects to other stable Long Island, NYC beaches, who reported that a beach grass (Ammophila breviligulata), whose roots grew sideways in search of water, held dunes in place, forming a barrier to the wind. In 1928, thousands of men worked on the beach, planting the grass by hand.

Built-in the 1920s, many of its buildings and facilities feature Art Deco architecture. In the center of a traffic circle that he planned as a terminus for the Wantagh State Parkway, Moses ordered the construction of an Italianate-style water tower to serve as a central feature of the park. Two large bathhouses are also prominent features within the park. After rejecting several submissions by architects for the bathhouses, Moses selected the designs of the young and relatively inexperienced Herbert Magoon. Moses also picked out building materials—Ohio Sandstone and Barbizon brick—two of the most expensive materials available. Top HVAC Long Island

 

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