Gardens of Eden: Long Island’s Early Twentieth Century Planned Communities

Robert B. MacKay, ed.
W.W. Norton & Co., 2015
$68.00 ($57.80 members)

Edited by Dr. Robert B. MacKay with contributions from several authors, including Richard Guy Wilson, this book explores Long Island’s first wave of suburbanization, the planned communities, or “residential parks” of the early twentieth century. Created by ambitious real estate developers using the ideals of the Garden City Movement, they attracted a growing middle class in search of country living. Among the many communities featured are Garden City, Forest Hills Gardens, Plandome, Long Beach, Great Neck Estates, Brightwaters, Montauk Beach, and Prospect Park South in Brooklyn.