Long Island’s whale-like geography shapes its development arc

Evidence

Separated from Manhattan only by the East River, it stretched out into the Atlantic Ocean for eighty miles, its bulk about twenty miles wide, and then threw two curving spits of land thirty-nine miles farther out so that its shape reminded Walt Whitman of a whale ducking its great head to plunge beneath the southern tip of Manhattan while its flukes waved behind. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 639

Categorization

• SEED: A fine ‘geography as narrative driver’ vignette about how physical shape structured where a metropolis could sprawl.
• XREF: connects to: Glacial melt created Long Island’s barrier-beach south shore and bay — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 640; Long Island’s North Shore was a colony of concentrated industrial-era wealth — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 654; Long Island’s barrier beach is geologically unstable, constantly reshaped by currents and storms — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 713

Broader Connections

• Glacial melt created Long Island’s barrier-beach south shore and bay #corroborates (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 640
• Long Island’s North Shore was a colony of concentrated industrial-era wealth #complicates (0.70) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 654