Back
in June 1928, the New York Mirror advertised to its million readers the charms
of a heavily-wooded and high-cliffed section of the North Shore of Long Island,
located halfway between Port Jefferson and Riverhead. The Mirror offered building
lots for summer homes to those who wanted to "get away from it all" during the
good weather season. The advertisements extolled the virtues of climate, the smoothness
of the beach, the fine bathing, boating and fishing facilities. City folk read
the tempting story told in the pages of the Mirror; they drove out or arrived
by train (there was a whistle-stop for Rocky Point in those days on the Long Island
Railroad line that terminated at Wading River); they saw, were charmed, and bought
eagerly. The old Rocky Point R. R. Station was located where the Thurber Lumber
Co. now has its showroom. A short time later Warren and Arthur Smadbeck, a New
York real estate firm, took over from the Mirror and established a young man named
Edward Olsen, as their local representative. Ed got busy earnestly exhorting those
who wanted the charms of the country combined with the friendliness of a young
and growing community, to come out and build among the pines and cedars of Rocky
Point.
It
was about this time in the early development of the "Summer City" that the first
towers of the huge RCA plant started to rise skyward and lent an international
distinction to our area.
Stores
to service this growing community went up like mushrooms--among the earliest was
Manniello's and Cardona's grocery and general store, and Rocky Point's main street,
called "Broadway" took on the semblance of a commercial thoroughfare. Bill Jampol
built a line of "Tax Payers" along both sides of this broad avenue. This original
expansion was soon added to by the Loper Brothers Co. and the Thurber Lumber Co.,
the Zeidler Bros. started to put in wells, followed by William Behr, with
his oil burner and pump business. But, of major importance to the new homeowners
was The Mirror's erection of a beautiful clubhouse on the highest point in the
community, and the turning over of the same to the newly organized band of homeowners.
Thus
the North Shore Beach Property Owners' Association came into being and took possession
on July 15, 1929, with appropriate ceremonies. The late Eugene Sherk, a Brooklyn
lawyer, was elected first President of the NSBPOA, and with admirable courage
and sagacity injected the kind of community life into it, which has animated and
sustained it to this day.
(Reprinted
from the North Shore Beach Association newsletter of Winter/Spring '97/'98. The
above are excerpts that were printed in the 30th Anniversary issue of the NSBPOA
newsletter. Harry Ash was a former president of the NSBPOA, and this first appeared
in the Port Jefferson Record and the Port Jefferson Times in September
1959.)
THIS
TOWN IS 
