About Long Beach

Long Beach is a city in Nassau County, New York, United States. Just south of Long Island, it is located on Long Beach Barrier Island, which is the westernmost of the outer barrier islands off Long Island's South Shore. As of the United States 2010 Census, the city population was 33,275. It was incorporated in 1922, and is nicknamed The City By the Sea (as seen in Latin on its official seal). Long Beach's first inhabitants were the Algonquian-speaking Rockaway Indians, who sold the area to English colonists in 1643. While the barrier island was used by baymen and farmers, for fishing and harvesting salt hay, no one lived there year-round for more than two centuries. In 1906, William Reynolds, a 39-year-old former state senator and real estate developer planned to build a boardwalk, homes, and hotels on the island. Reynolds had a herd of elephants marched in from Dreamland, ostensibly to help build the Long Beach Boardwalk; he had created an effective publicity stunt. To ensure that Long Beach lived up to his billing it "The Riviera of the East", he required each building to be constructed in an "eclectic Mediterranean style", with white stucco walls and red-clay tile roofs. He built a theater called Castles by the Sea, with the largest dance floor in the world, for dancers Vernon and Irene Castle. The island was a popular resort for people from New York all the way up to the 1940s when cheaper air flights meant people could fly to other parts of the country. in the 1980s and 90s Long Beach began to reinvent itself and is now becoming more popular as a destination again. Long Beach has a humid subtropical climate, with humid hot summers and cool winters.