Definition
Jones Beach is a state park on a seven-mile barrier island off the south shore of Long Island, opened August 4, 1929. Robert Moses, as president of the Long Island State Park Commission, planned and built it between 1924 and 1929, and continued to design and expand it for the next thirty years.
The beach was the first major realization of Moses's vision for the Long Island state-park system. It remains one of the great public beaches in the world, hosting roughly six million visitors a year.
Why Jones Beach matters
The making of Jones Beach
In 1924 Jones Beach was an empty, unstable barrier island accessible only by boat. By 1929 it was a seven-mile public park with bathhouses for ten thousand, two pools, a boardwalk, a water tower, picnic areas, and the Wantagh Parkway running to it.
The technical achievements were substantial. The dunes — historically unstable, shifting with storms — were stabilized by planting Ammophila arenaria (beach grass) at scale. Landscape architects had identified the species after studying older Long Island beaches; Moses ordered planting at a scale that had not been attempted in American public-works practice. Within three seasons the dunes held.
The aesthetic decisions were Moses's. He chose a particular warm tan brick that would not glare in summer sun. He insisted on a nautical theme — lighthouses, anchors, bell-buoy trash cans — that was both decorative and place-appropriate. He specified cleanup standards (any waste paper on the beach was to be removed within fifteen minutes of being seen) that the park staff still enforces.
The class encoding
Jones Beach also embeds the class-exclusion choices Robert Caro documented across Moses's career. Access to the beach was almost entirely by automobile via the Wantagh and Meadowbrook Parkways. The parkway bridges were built low — typically nine feet of clearance — to keep buses out. Buses were the transportation mode of New Yorkers who did not own cars. The Long Island Rail Road did not serve the beach.
Caro's argument in The Power Broker is that the parkway-only access was a choice. A transit-accessible Jones Beach was technically possible; Moses chose not to build it.
Jones Beach today
The beach has been continuously operated as a state park since 1929. It hosts roughly six million visitors a year. The bathhouses and water tower Moses commissioned still stand. The Jones Beach Marine Theatre (1952) hosts Broadway productions in summer.
The class-encoding of access has been partly addressed — limited bus service was eventually added — but the parkway-only design remains. The beach is, in this sense, both a great public achievement and a permanent record of the choices that produced it.