Locust Valley

About 10,000 years ago, the last ice age’s retreating glaciers left behind the rolling hills of Long Island’s North Shore as terminal moraines. The region from Flushing to Setauket was named “hilly ground” or Matinecock by the Algonquian tribe who established there, and as a result, the Algonquian Indians who lived there became known as the Matinecock Indians.

Captain John Underhill bargained with the Matinecock Indians in 1667 to buy land for a colony he and the other settlers would name Buckram. Due to the abundance of locust trees in the area, the town’s name was changed to Locust Valley in 1856 after over 200 years of use.

The Glen Cove line was expanded by the Long Island Rail Road on April 19, 1869, along a single track to Locust Valley. This served as the line’s terminus until 1889, when the railroad was extended to its present terminus in Oyster Bay.

The Locust Valley station and the adjacent crossroads of Forest Ave/Buckram Road and Birch Hill Road became the heart of a thriving commercial district with the advent of the Long Island Rail Road. The commercial area expanded to service the magnificent estates being created in the nearby communities of Bayville, Centre Island, Lattingtown, Mill Neck, Matinecock, Muttontown, and The Brookvilles as the North Shore of Long Island developed into the Gold Coast in the early 20th century.

At his 150-acre (0.61 km2) Delano & Aldrich mansion “Oak Point” at Bayville, on neighboring Pine Island, the affluent Harrison Williams had made his home by 1927. His fleet of Rolls-Royce motorcars would frequently make a stop in the hamlet for last-minute food as it brought weekend guests—including Scott Fitzgerald, the Prince of Wales, Cecil Beaton, and Winston Churchill—to the Locust Valley Station. John Kenneth Galbraith remarked, “If there must be madness something may be said for having it on a heroic scale” in his book about the Great Depression, referring to Wall Street mogul Williams’ pyramiding of utilities holding companies. At the time, Williams was regarded as the wealthiest American.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Locust Valley was home to a number of notable individuals, including Robert A. Lovett, a former US Secretary of Defense and partner in Wall Street’s Brown Brothers Harriman Bank; Elizabeth Shoumatoff, a well-known portrait painter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt; and Leonard Hall, the National Chairman of the Republican Party. Cole Porter and the Duke of Windsor also frequently visited the hamlet to unwind and rejuvenate.

Due to its status as the economic hub and home to the train station serving the nearby Gold Coast villages, the relatively small Locust Valley came to be known as the area between Glen Cove and Oyster Bay. The upper-class accent known as “Locust Valley Lockjaw” was connected to this broader neighborhood, which currently makes up the Locust Valley School service area. Although the accent is not as noticeable as it formerly was, upper-class New Yorkers still congregate in Locust Valley for social events. Numerous people belong to the exclusive Piping Rock Club, The Creek, Beaver Dam, and Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, among other clubs in the vicinity.

The Duke of Windsor, John Lennon, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are just a few of the notable people who have made significant stays in Locust Valley.