Oyster Bay, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

David deVries recorded the harbor's name in his diary in 1639: "we found fine oysters there, from which the Dutch call it Oyster Bay."^[1] The Dutch had already purchased a tract including the future Town's land in 1639 as part of New Netherland.^[1] In 1648 Robert Williams of Hempstead bought from Native Americans a large parcel represented today by Hicksville and adjacent parts of Jericho, Plainview, Syosset and Woodbury.^[1] Five years later, in 1653, the Native American leader Mohannes sold land in northern Oyster Bay to New Englanders Samuel Mayo, Peter Wright and William Leverich in what the Town calls its First Purchase, and other colonists soon joined them.^[1] In 1667, three years after England took New Netherland, Governor Sir Edmund Andros granted the Town a patent extending its land to the "Soth Sea" (Great South Bay).^[1]

After the Patriot army's defeat at the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, Oyster Bay came under British occupation.^[1] British troops used Raynham Hall, the home of Patriot merchant Samuel Townsend, as a headquarters; Townsend was arrested early in the war for supporting the Patriot cause.^[1] His son, Robert Townsend, nevertheless served General Washington's Culper spy ring as an undercover agent under the code name "Culper, Jr.," reportedly helping to expose Benedict Arnold's plot to surrender West Point.^[1] Raynham Hall, at 20 West Main Street, is today a museum and a Town of Oyster Bay designated landmark (dedicated March 10, 1987).^[1]

The hamlet returned to national attention with the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.^[1] Roosevelt bought farmland on the Cove Neck peninsula and began building Sagamore Hill in 1884 to a Queen Anne design by the New York firm Lamb and Rich; he and his second wife, Edith, moved in full-time in 1887 and he lived there until his death in 1919.^[2] The house served as his Summer White House for seven summers, from 1902 to 1908, and the Town's own history describes it as "dedicated as a national shrine during the administration of President Eisenhower."^[1] Sagamore Hill is now Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, and the Oyster Bay Long Island Rail Road station and its turntable were dedicated as Town landmarks on March 2, 1999.^[1]

How the roads got here

New York State's touring-route description carries NY 25A east through the hamlet's area via East Norwich toward Huntington, and routes NY 106 north from North Bellmore through Hicksville and Jericho to end at Bay Avenue in Oyster Bay.^[7] The Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway (NY 135) is separately designated the Ralph J. Marino Expressway between Seaford and Oyster Bay.^[7]

William K. Vanderbilt II's Long Island Motor Parkway opened its first section in 1908 and hosted the Vanderbilt Cup auto races; a Town of Oyster Bay photo caption of the 1908 race places "George Robertson, winner of the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup Race," approaching "the famous turn at Jericho," and the parkway operated as a private toll road until 1938.^[15][3]

Congress authorized the project in the Omnibus Transportation Act of 1967, and the Village of Rye sued to block the approach roads in 1968, but the decisive local move was the Town of Oyster Bay's donation, that same year, of land in the bridge's Nassau approach corridor to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.^[5] The refuge, now the Congressman Lester Wolff Oyster Bay National Wildlife Refuge, "was donated to the Service by the Town of Oyster Bay in 1968 as a habitat for migratory birds, particularly wintering waterfowl," and under the terms described in period accounts the land would have reverted if the bridge had gone forward, giving opponents a federal veto over the highway's path.^[5]

Law and legal history

A Town zoning fight over a topless bar produced a First Amendment ruling from the Second Circuit.^[8] The "Raven's Nest" operated in an F ("Neighborhood") Business District under Town of Oyster Bay Code chapter 246 for some 22 years; in 1997 the Town revoked its certificate of occupancy after state criminal proceedings found it was being run as an unpermitted cabaret, and its owner, Dennis Charette, sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to reopen it.^[8] In Charette v. Town of Oyster Bay, 159 F.3d 749 (2d Cir. 1998), the Second Circuit held that the Town's permit standards for "other uses" in F Zones — turning on undefined criteria such as "health, safety, welfare, comfort, convenience or order" — were the type of broad discretionary standard that can fail First Amendment scrutiny, and it vacated the denial of a preliminary injunction and remanded for further fact-finding on how the code had actually been enforced.^[8]

A second dispute tested the Town's zoning against state civil-rights law.^[9][10] In 1993 the Town Board created a "Golden Age" zoning district for below-market-rate senior housing, and in 2004 a "Next Generation" district for below-market, price-controlled housing for first-time buyers, both carrying residency preferences favoring current Town residents and their relatives.^[9][10] In 2009 the New York State Division of Human Rights (SDHR) opened an administrative complaint on its own motion alleging the preferences amounted to unlawful race and national-origin discrimination in housing under the Human Rights Law, noting that in 2000 only 1.6% of the Town's population "was Black... in sharp contrast to the rest of Nassau County."^[10] The Town sued to enjoin the SDHR proceeding and to have the statute authorizing SDHR to both file and decide complaints declared unconstitutional; the Appellate Division, Second Department, held in Town of Oyster Bay v. Kirkland, 81 A.D.3d 812 (2011), that most of the Town's claims required exhausting administrative remedies first and that combining SDHR's investigative and adjudicative roles "is not, ipso facto, a denial of due process."^[9] The Court of Appeals affirmed in a memorandum decision, 19 N.Y.3d 1035 (2012), holding that the Town's remaining "reverse discrimination" claim likewise required an administrative factual record before a court could review it, after an earlier appeal on constitutional grounds had been dismissed, 17 N.Y.3d 778 (2011).^[10]

Government, courts and policing

The Nassau County Police Department's Second Precinct, headquartered at 7700 Jericho Turnpike in Woodbury, lists Oyster Bay among the hamlets it covers, describing its territory as running "from Old Country Road to the Long Island Sound and from east of the Wantagh State Parkway to the Suffolk County border" and naming Oyster Bay, Jericho, Syosset and Woodbury among the communities inside its boundary, while noting that the City of Glen Cove and several incorporated villages maintain their own police departments.^[11][12]

Nassau County District Court, at 99 Main Street in Hempstead, "decide[s] civil suits involving claims up to $15,000, handle[s] misdemeanors and lesser offenses, and arraign[s] defendants accused of felonies" countywide, including for unincorporated Oyster Bay.^[13] Larger civil matters go to Nassau County Supreme Court at 100 Supreme Court Drive in Mineola, where, as the state court system puts it, "Outside New York City, Supreme Courts hear civil matters while the County Courts hear criminal matters."^[14] Town Hall North, the seat of the Town of Oyster Bay's government (Town Board, Town Attorney, Town Clerk and Supervisor's offices), is at 54 Audrey Avenue in the hamlet.^[16]