Long Island Motor Parkway
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The Long Island Motor Parkway (LIMP), also known as the Vanderbilt Parkway and Motor Parkway, was one of the first limited-access automobile highways, privately constructed on Long Island, New York.
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History
It was planned by William Kissam Vanderbilt II to stretch for 70 miles as a route in and out of New York City as far as Riverhead, the county seat of Suffolk County, New York, and point of division for the north and south forks of Long Island.
Eventually only 45 miles (from Queens, New York to Lake Ronkonkoma, New York) would actually be constructed. Construction began in 1908 (a year later than the Bronx River Parkway), and a 10-mile-long section of the parkway opened to traffic that same year, making it the first superhighway put into use. The Long Island Motor Parkway was a toll road.
In the 1930s the larger, more modern, and free state-government-built Northern State Parkway was constructed parallel to the Long Island Motor Parkway. In April 1938 the Long Island Parkway was officially closed to automobile traffic.
Racing
An impetus for the building of the road was to provide a graded, banked and grade-separated highway suitable for racing. Vanderbilt had operated his Vanderbilt Cup races over local roads in Nassau County, New York during the first decade of the 20th century, but the killing of two spectators and the injury of many others showed the need to eliminate racing on residential streets.
The parkway hosted races on its first open portion in 1908 and on the full road in 1909 and 1910, but another accident in the latter year, killing four with additional injuries, caused the New York State Legislature to ban racing except on race tracks, ending the parkway's career as a racing road.
Survivals
Most of the road from Queens to Western Suffolk County, New York has been obliterated by homes, other roads and structures, or has returned to nature. Some parts can be traced, some bridges still exist.
A portion in Queens was reopened a few months after closure as a bicycle path, but the highway itself survives as a continuous county road, Vanderbilt Motor Parkway (County Route 67) from Half Hollow Road in Half Hollow Hills to its original end in Ronkonkoma, just a few blocks short of the lake. Signage along the way also identifies it variously as Vanderbilt Parkway and Motor Parkway.
Though not a limited access road since 1938, most of the road was quite recognizable into the 1970s, although new intersections continued to be cut through it. In the approximate middle of the road in and around Islandia, New York, office construction and other commercial building has widened the road and made it appear a typical highway. Nonetheless, other portions, especially at the western and eastern ends of the surviving road can be enjoyed for its greenery and graded and banked turns and rolling hills, albeit at considerably less than racecar speeds.
See also
External links
- Long Island Vanderbilt Parkway (http://www.nycroads.com/history/motor/)