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Babylon is a village in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 12,615 at the 2000 census.

Its official name is The Incorporated Village of Babylon. It is commonly referred to as Babylon Village, to distinguish it from the Town of Babylon, of which it is a part.

History

What is now Babylon Town and Village was part of Huntington Town and known as South Huntington (or Huntington South). Lightly settled from 1689, its main industry, in common with much of the area along Great South Bay and South Oyster Bay (both actually lagoons), was the harvesting of salt hay, which was used as cattle feed and bedding.

When a coherent community grew up in the area by 1803, prominent local citizens sought to adopt a new name. An influential local lady, Mrs. Conklin, was used to living inland in what is now considered Dix Hills and was at unease with the homesite that her grandchildren would be raised in. The bible-reading Mrs. Conklin compared the new hamlet to the biblical city of Babylon and proposed that name in apparent defiance of the area's rather bawdy reputation as a stop-over place for travellers on Long Island's south shore. Her son Nat was appalled by the use of an "unholy" name. The family legend states she replied: "But it will be a new Babylon." The name stuck, despite some effort to change it. The adjacent part of Islip town, an effective extension of Babylon, was originally considered as part of Babylon, or as East Babylon, but today is the hamlet of West Islip.

Incorporation

In 1891, the hamlet of Babylon incorporated as a village, gaining a municipal government with an elected mayor and other officials. This proved important in the revival of the community nearly a century later.

In 1925, the LIRR extended electric train service to Babylon, where it still ends today. This established Babylon as a major commuter town.

Railroad History

In 1865, Babylon became a major station and division point for the South Side Rail Road, later acquired by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). For a brief period, Babylon had another railroad terminal, that of the Central Railroad of Long Island, closer to the shore. Both of these lines still run as part of the LIRR, though the CRRLI soon gave up its own station and moved into the LIRR's. In 1925, the line was electrified with third rail, and most service from the former South Side line (now known as the Montauk Line or Babylon Branch of the LIRR) has been operated by electric multiple unit trains since. Trains that take the former CRRLI line from Mineola and Hicksville, now known as the Central Branch, and all trains east of Babylon operate with diesel-electric power, which replaced steam locomotives in the 1950s.

Hotels and Gateway to Fire Island

Babylon soon became the primary gateway to the nearby barrier beaches, including Fire Island, a position it held until the building of the current Captree Causeways allowing automobile access to the beaches nearest the Babylon shore. Beachgoers arriving by train or coach, or staying at local hotels typically took the Babylon Railroad, originally a horsecar line and later a trolley, to the Babylon Dock for ferries to Oak Island, Muncie Island, and Fire Island destinations.

As now, the epitome of the luxury lifestyle was summering on the ocean. This led many affluent individuals and families to reside at Babylon's seaside resorts, both on the mainland and on barrier beach islands. Muncie Island, (was just north of Oak Beach, island was depleted for the construction of Ocean Parkway) was host to one of the most elite sanitoriums and nearby Saltaire was host to the Surf Hotel offering several hundred rooms to guests. Guests of the Surf would take the rail road to Babylon's trolley and then cross the bay by a ferry. Off Robins Avenue at Stone Dock was the South Shore Inn and Watson House on Fire Island Avenue was famed to be "L.I.'s most luxurious hotel" when it was built. Those of even greater wealth would have homes or compounds built on the shore or barrier beach islands for vacationing. Stage stop hotels include the La Grange Inn, now used as a catering hall and is actually in adjacent West Islip.

Some of Babylon's hotels:

  • American Hotel, Main Street and Fire Island Avenue
  • The Argyle, Arygle Park, Main Street
  • Boynes Hotel, at steamboat dock
  • East End Hotel, Main Street and Cooper Street (burned in 1982)
  • La Grange Inn, South Country Road, (West Islip), still in business
  • St. James West Main Street
  • Sherman House, East Main Street
  • South Shore Inn, Robbins Avenue
  • Surf Hotel, Fire Island, east of the lighthouse
  • Watson House, Fire Island Avenue

The Argyle Hotel & Park

The famous Argyle Hotel in Babylon was one of many built in the late 1800’s to accommodate wealthy summer visitors from New York City. It was constructed in 1882 by August Belmont, the LIRR and resort entrepreneur on the former estate of Brooklyn railroad magnate Electus B. Litchfield. Financing was provided by a syndicate headed by Long Island Rail Road President, Austin Corbin. The grounds, which included a large millpond, Blythebourne Lake became renamed Argyle Lake, for one of the hotel’s largest investors and town aristocrat, the heir to the Dukedom of Argyll. The renaming gave the Hotel & Park a more genteel English flavor yet the hotel proved a bad venture: it was near the end of the era of such projects, it was built much too large with 350 rooms, and so was rarely more than one-third filled. After about a decade of disuse, it was finally demolished in 1904, some of the structure being used to build homes west of the lake in the area now known as Argyle Park. In 1921, the land that is now Argyle Park was anonymously donated for passive recreation to the Village of Babylon, a use for which it still popular, drawing substantial numbers of visitors from outside the community for fishing, strolling, the children's playground and especially for weddings, since the waterfalls make an attractive setting for picture-taking.

Effingham Park/Hawley's Lake Park

Effingham Park was the site of the Old Mill on what is now the Babylon Village-West Islip border and South Country Road, now Montauk Highway (Main Street in Babylon). The old mill is claimed to be the first permanent structure in the Village area and was constructed for Judge Garrett Montfort and operated by the Oakley family for approximately 100 years. Nathaniel Conklin also owned the mill and in its final years, ownership was in the hands of David Ricketts, the second mayor of the Village. Ricketts used the mill as a toy whip factory which he later relocated to George Street. At one point, a bridge was used to carry Main Street over the overflow's connection to Sumpwams Creek.

The park belonged to the estate of Effingham Sutton that later came into the ownership of Edwin Hawley, a U.S. railroad tycoon. Hawley demolished the Old Mill and parts of Sutton's Estate to erect an even more opulent estate including guest cottages, staff housing, and stables. Hawley turned the overflow from the Old Mill into a waterfall that matched and, some claim, exceeded the splendor of the still-existent Argyle Falls at Argyle Memorial Park. In addition to the falls, there were two bridges crossing the north side and mid-northeast side of the lake in many old postcards and photographs. The north side bridge was likely the bridge that carried George Street over the stream feeding Hawley's Pond, before New York Highway 231 was put through the area.

The Hawley Estate was gated off from the public with hedges and grand ornate estate fencing so that the public rarely saw its vast luxuries and amenities. In the late 1960's the site of Hawley's Pond was in a rundown state, being unkempt and dilapidated. When Route 231 was being built, Hawley's Lake Park lost all hope of being repaired and restored to its former glory: the routes northern and southern termius were run directly through the estate. Some sources even claim that the lake was made considerably smaller and partially filled in during the expressway's construction. Today Hawley's Lake Park is an unused resource due mostly for its lack of parking and lack of Village concern. The aging grand falls were replaced with a more modern less ornate and less attractive setup. The Babylon Beautification Society tries from time to time to maintain the site, although no plan has proved considerably successful. Since there is no parking at the site, and access by families that might otherwise want to use it, is constrained by the necessity of crossing active highway lanes. The park is little used except by dog-walkers and fisherman by day and vagrants and youth intrusion at night, creating problems of alcohol consumption, sporadic vandalism and broken glass. Between the park and the Lake Drives in West Islip and the northern terminus of Route 231 is a small group of ponds also belonging to the former Effingham Park. This portion is no longer designated as park property and is accessible to the homes on Lake Drive South and Lake Drive North. The overflow pool from Hawley's Fall opens into two tunnels beneath Main Street that drain into Sumpwams River, known locally as East Creek, and eventually into Great South Bay.

Baseball and African-American history

Many of the black service personnel of the Argyle Hotel formed a baseball team, the Babylon Black Panthers, said to be the first black professional baseball team. The team so dominated local white teams that Walter Cook, a New Jersey promoter, put up the money to have them travel and play as the "Cuban Giants." Calling black ballplayers (or ballplayers in "white" professional clubs in that era who seemed too dark to be caucasian) "Cuban" was a common practice through World War II. There were no Cubans in the Cuban Giants.

The team went on to become the "world colored champions" of 1887 and 1888, and spawned imitators.

Babylon Village today has three baseball fields for the high school, little league and adult play, and the high school team is named the Babylon Panthers. The village also has one of Long Island's older continuous African-American communities, of which the employees of the Argyle are said to have formed the core. This community still maintains two of the village's 12 churches, the Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, both on Cooper Street.

Another prominent African-American, the film actress Thelma (Butterfly) McQueen, moved with her family from her birthplace of Tampa, Florida to live on Cottage Row in Babylon, where she went on to graduate from Babylon High School and then pursued her acting career before later attending several universities and attaining a degree in political science. Cottage Row still exists but no longer has any housing on it, falling prey to parking space for business district stores.

Current village

Babylon today is part suburban bedroom community, part small-town, and has a substantial shopping and business district. It is situated between Lindenhurst-West Babylon and West Islip at west and east, North Babylon on the northern boundary, and South Oyster Bay near its merger into Great South Bay on the south.

Today the village is best known for its restaurants and shops, and hosts shopping events during the fall as well as a popular crafts fair.

A statue of Robert Moses was erected in front of the Village Hall on Main Street (Montauk Highway) in 2003.

Housing stock and neighorhoods

The commercial and housing stock in Babylon reflects its longevity as a community. Because of the 140-year presence of the railroad, and its earlier status as a way station on Montauk Highway, originally the only through highway on Long Island's south shore, most of the core of Babylon dates to the era from before the American Civil War to World War I. As a result, there is a mix of building styles, including pre-Civil War, colonial, Victorian, and more recent designs. Nearer the shore, much of the housing was originally summer properties, including mansions and estates, cottages and bungaloes: the latter two, viturally all now winterized. As far as large formal mansions and estates, most have been razed, yet one of the last remaining estates in Babylon, and preumably the towns smallest is the Long Island Yacht Club, formerly the private residence of Gold Coast Mansion builder, E.W. Howell.

Areas of large old homes and less formal mansions exist in a number of areas, including on Fire Island Avenue, Crescent Avenue and Thompson Avenue on Sumpawam's Neck, the area in between West Creek (Carll's River) and East Creek (Sumpawams River), the main body of the village between Main Street and the Bay.

Because of this history, and the general unavailability of large tracts of building land, Babylon Village has very few tract houses or developments. Some of the few area developed after World War II reflected the conversion of remaining farms and remains of large estates and mansions. There areas generally contain 1950s-style ranch houses, but there are some characteristic Long Island split level homes and high ranches.

Areas of large new homes are on formerly undeveloped or reclaimed former wetlands developed during the 1960s and 1970s, including on Lucinda and Peninsula Drives, with estate-like homes such as that of Bret Saberhagen until 2001. Most of the affulent homes built in these new areas were large ranch houses, popular in the time of building, but much less favored today. In the last decade and continuing to the present, many of these houses have been expanded by adding a story and changing their style to more colonial appearance.

Babylon Village has also experienced the modern phenomenon in which small sound houses on desirable lots have been purchased and torn down by affluent recent purchasers and replaced with as large houses as zoning will permit, meaning that the new home builder has paid the price of a home just to obtain the lot.

The Long Island Railroad's south shore electrified line begins at Babylon insuring riders a seat and a short ride to mid town Manhattan.

Houses of Worship

  • Assembly of God Church, 54 George Street
  • Bethel A.M.E. Church, 50 Cooper Street
  • Christ Episcopal Church, 12 Prospect Street
  • Congregation Beth Sholom, 441 Deer Park Avenue
  • Cross of Christ Lutheran Church, 576 Deer Park Avenue
  • Ebenezer Baptist Church, 33 Cooper Street
  • First Baptist Church of Babylon, 300 West Main Street
  • First Presbyterian Church of Babylon, 79 East Main Street
  • St. Nicholas' Greek Orthodox Church, 200 Great East Neck Road (West Babylon)
  • St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, 40 Grove Place
  • Seventh Day Adventist Church, 136 Fire Island Avenue
  • United Methodist Church of Babylon, 21 James Street

Babylon Schools

Most of the residents of the Village of Babylon are served by the Babylon Union Free School District (UFSD). Since the school district lines are not coextensive with the village boundaries, as is common on Long Island, some residents of Babylon Village are in the West Babylon UFSD and, conversely, some residents of North Babylon go to the village schools, as well as residents of Oak Island, Oak Beach, Gilgo, West Gilgo, and Captree Island across the Great South Bay.

According to the 2000 United States Census there were 1,371 children between the ages of five and 18 living in Babylon Village. Most of these are served by the three Babylon School District schools:

  • Babylon Elementary School, serves all students in grades K-2;
  • Babylon Grade School, serves all students in grades 3-6. Both of these schools are on a single large campus running east from Ralph Avenue between on Park Avenue and Beverly Road;
  • Babylon Junior-Senior High School, serves grades 7-12 in the original, but modernized and expanded High School building on North Carll Avenue between South Railroad Avenue and Grove Place, opposite the Babylon Railroad Station.

Babylon Village children who live in the West Babylon School District (all of Babylon Village west of Route 109 and all of Little East Neck south of Cambridge Drive) are served by these schools:

  • John F. Kennedy Elementary School or South Bay School, both on the same campus west of Great East Neck Road, grades K-5;
  • West Babylon Junior High School, serves students in grades 6-8, located at Old Farmingdale Road and Little East Neck Road;
  • West Babylon High School, serves students in grades 9-12, at the junction of Route 109 (Babylon-Farmingdale Road) and Great East Neck Road.

The poet Walt Whitman, forced to find work after fires in New York City in 1835 devastated the printing and publishing industry, took work at a number of Long Island "country schools." Among them was West Babylon's school, located midway between Little East Neck and Great East Neck Roads, just west of the current village boundary, and now occupied by a supermarket, where he taught in the winter of 1836-37.*

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 7.1 km² (2.8 mi²). 6.2 km² (2.4 mi²) of it is land and 0.9 km² (0.3 mi²) of it (12.32%) is water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 12,615 people, 4,554 households, and 3,324 families residing in the village. The population density was 2,021.0/km² (5,226.6/mi²). There were 4,680 housing units at an average density of 749.8/km² (1,939.0/mi²). The racial makeup of the village was 92.46% White, 2.69% Black or African American, 0.10% Native American, 1.45% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 1.49% from other races, and 1.80% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.11% of the population.

There were 4,554 households out of which 35.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.6% were married couples living together, 9.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.0% were non-families. 21.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.71 and the average family size was 3.20.

In the village the population was spread out with 25.7% under the age of 18, 5.7% from 18 to 24, 32.9% from 25 to 44, 23.3% from 45 to 64, and 12.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 93.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.9 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $69,767, and the median income for a family was $78,814. Males had a median income of $58,059 versus $38,770 for females. The per capita income for the village was $30,846. About 2.1% of families and 4.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 2.9% of those under age 18 and 7.6% of those age 65 or over.

Notable Residents (Past & Present)

External links

Suffolk County, New York | Villages in New York | African-American history

 

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