Looking back: Memories of Merrick

I have lived in Merrick for 65 years, having moved here from Island Park in 1949. Merrick has changed enormously in that time. Stately mansions were replaced by shopping centers, strip malls and office buildings.

The Hewlett peninsula, south of Merrick Road, once only went down as far as Holland Way, the Merrick Avenue peninsula ran down to the Bay, and the Beach Drive peninsula only went down as far as Irene Street. Before that, there were watery marshes to the south.

Look at it today. Thousands of beautiful, modern homes were built in those marshes. How was that possible? Men like Harry Firester discovered a way to turn mud into gold! He learned how to dredge mud out of the bottom of the bay and pour it on to the watery marshes, thus turning wetlands into building lots, many of them with waterfronts.

In the 1960s, Merrick Life began publishing a column called, “Looking Back: Memories of Merrick.” It was a weekly pictorial history of Merrick. That column got me interested in Merrick’s history. There was no way I could remember the hundreds of pictures contained in those columns. Fortunately, Linda Toscano and Paul Laursen, the publisher and editor of Merrick Life, respectively, provided the Historical Society of the Merricks with many of the columns. I used them to refresh my memory of what I enjoyed so much in the 1960s. Some of the pictures published were antiques. Others were taken in the 1960s, before the historical structures were taken down. Many of the pictures displayed structures built in the early 1700s that no longer exist. In their place today are shopping centers.