Barons seized public beach access by condemning widows’ shorefront property

Evidence

The shore front on the Great Neck peninsula, the first of the series of peninsulas that compose most of the North Shore in Nassau and western Suffolk, was entirely in their hands, except for a few slivers owned by less wealthy individuals who emulated the barons in keeping their property for their own use. So was the shore front on the next peninsula, except for two pieces of property at its tip, Sands Point. One was a small crescent of beach, rather rocky, owned by an elderly widow, a native of Long Island, who liked to see people having fun and had not only resisted entreaties that she bar them from the property but had stubbornly refused, even for an outrageously high price, to sell her beach to those who would; it was in the process of being condemned by a village board controlled by the barons. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 663

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Lewis Morris’s theme of coastal land contested between private elites and public use — the prehistory of public beach access fights. — connects to: A private heiress blocked public access to a federally eased road to the beach — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 664
• ADDENDUM: Directly connects to the property-vs-commons framing in the trees/worldbuilding material about who controls land and its uses.

Broader Connections

• A private heiress blocked public access to a federally eased road to the beach #exemplifies (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 664