Chris and I have been hearing these strange tales of 'Tiny Towns' in the Long Island area long enough. So this weekend we set out on an adventure in search of little people in little houses. I have to say we were sadly led astray by these stories, but in the end found some pretty cool neighborhoods during our weekend adventure...
So the first place we went to was Merrick, NY which is located in Nassau Co. and not far out of the city on the south shore of Long Island. We found very cryptic directions to the location on the following website: Long Island Ruins. This area of houses is just northeast of Camp and Merrick avenues off Lee street. At first we were aimlessly driving around looking for these supposed tiny people and tiny homes only to find out there are about 5 homes that are just a bit smaller than the rest. I guess the place used to be a Methodist campground were families would summer and do Methodist revival activities caravan and tent style. The campsites with tents were eventually turned into small cottages some of which are still there amongst all the 'normal' homes. We unfortunately did not have our camera up and working (cause the battery decided to die on us and we weren't smart enough to break out the phone camera at this point) so the picture below is stolen from another website. Read more about the place here.
Not satisfied by the first location, Chris and I went in search of the 2nd supposed tiny town further east on the Island. This place was just south of Dowling College in Oakdale, NY. We followed another more cryptic link on the Dowling College website to this location. Basically you follow Idle Hour Blvd down to this spot:
And then just park your car and walk around...
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| take out the trash you tiny home owners!! |
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| obviously not built for Norwegians |
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| these little homes used to be stables for all the farm animals |
This whole area used to be part of the Vanderbilt estate's farm. It was bought by Lucy Pitchard Sawyer Thompson who basically turned the area into a artist colony that apparently still houses art fairs in the summer.
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| Chris is a monster compared to this house! |
And because I was now obsessed with small homes, on our way out of Bohemia I made Chris stop at the local mini storage lot for these.
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| what - you mean they have tiny wells too? |
I heard about these tiny houses in college from my roommate, who was from Long Island. Thank you for actually investigating and posting photos. There are so many terrible posts on the internet about this topic, but you actually put in some real effort. Thanks, again!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a high school student at Mepham (located just blocks from Merrick's tiny town), we got a kick out of driving through this neighborhood. We didn't think tiny people lived there. Although there were maybe ten houses a little bit smaller than usual, it was the size of the streets that provided the most amusement. They were very narrow, and the houses were built merely feet from their edge. I hate to admit it, but I was in a car or two with passengers who knocked on doors from inside the car. Some locals called it tiny town, old timers called it the campgrounds.
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