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Jones Beach State Park
Jones Beach State Park (colloquially "Jones Beach") is a state park in the U.S. state of New York. 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 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.
The park, 6.5 miles (10.5 km) in length, is renowned for its beaches (which, excepting the beach on Zachs Bay, face the open Atlantic Ocean) and furnishes one of the most popular summer recreational locations for the New York metropolitan area. It is the most popular and heavily visited beach on the East Coast, with an estimated 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 operation on the outer beach near the site of the present park.
Jones Beach was Moses' first major public project, free from housing developments and private clubs, and is open for the general public.
When Moses' group first surveyed Jones Island in the 1920s, it was swampy and only two feet (0.61 m) above sea level; the island was frequently submerged during storms. To create the park, huge dredgers brought sand from the bay bottom, eventually raising the island to 12 feet (3.7 m) above sea level. Another problem was the wind: the fine silver beach sand would blow, making the workers miserable and making the use of the beach as a recreational facility unlikely. Moses sent landscape architects to other stable Long Island 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 the summer of 1928, thousands of men worked on the beach planting the grass by hand. Several houses on High Hill Beach were moved by barge eastward to West Gilgo Beach to make room for the park.
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. After rejecting a number of submissions by architects for the bathhouses, Moses selected the designs of the young and relatively inexperienced Herbert Magoon. Moses also specified that they be built of Ohio Sandstone and Barbizon brick, two of the most expensive materials available.
The park opened to the public on August 4, 1929, along with the causeway that provided automobile access from the mainland of Long Island. The causeway was the first section in what was to become the Wantagh State Parkway. Unusually for the time, no carnival-style amusements were allowed in the park area.
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Jones Beach State Park
Jones Beach State Park (colloquially "Jones Beach") is a state park in the U.S. state of New York. 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 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.
The park, 6.5 miles (10.5 km) in length, is renowned for its beaches (which, excepting the beach on Zachs Bay, face the open Atlantic Ocean) and furnishes one of the most popular summer recreational locations for the New York metropolitan area. It is the most popular and heavily visited beach on the East Coast, with an estimated 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 operation on the outer beach near the site of the present park.
Jones Beach was Moses' first major public project, free from housing developments and private clubs, and is open for the general public.
When Moses' group first surveyed Jones Island in the 1920s, it was swampy and only two feet (0.61 m) above sea level; the island was frequently submerged during storms. To create the park, huge dredgers brought sand from the bay bottom, eventually raising the island to 12 feet (3.7 m) above sea level. Another problem was the wind: the fine silver beach sand would blow, making the workers miserable and making the use of the beach as a recreational facility unlikely. Moses sent landscape architects to other stable Long Island 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 the summer of 1928, thousands of men worked on the beach planting the grass by hand. Several houses on High Hill Beach were moved by barge eastward to West Gilgo Beach to make room for the park.
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. After rejecting a number of submissions by architects for the bathhouses, Moses selected the designs of the young and relatively inexperienced Herbert Magoon. Moses also specified that they be built of Ohio Sandstone and Barbizon brick, two of the most expensive materials available.
The park opened to the public on August 4, 1929, along with the causeway that provided automobile access from the mainland of Long Island. The causeway was the first section in what was to become the Wantagh State Parkway. Unusually for the time, no carnival-style amusements were allowed in the park area.
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