Teaching Long Beach History in Four Lessons

Turning nothing into something. It’s that classic American tale of innovation and hard work that many people can relate to, or at least love to hear, and Long Beach has a similar narrative.  

As local historian Roberta Fiore puts it, it’s a community that developed from “A sandbar to a city” in just a 15-year span.

Fiore teaches a four-week course at the Long Beach Historical Museum on how Long Beach become the city it is today. Starting in 1908, State Senator William Reynolds transformed acres of sand into a city, complete with a boardwalk and a resort hotel, utilizing the Long Island Rail Road to start creating what he envisioned to one day be America’s Venice.

“An uninhabitable sandbar became a self-governing city of close to 100,000 people in the summer,” Fiore said.

Her twice-yearly class, entitled “Four Phases of Long Beach History,” starts by touching on the Rockaway Indians, who inhabited the land in the 17th Century, and ends with the first city manger in 1948. The course's main focus, though, is Long Beach’s transition to becoming a city in 1922 after Reynolds first invested in the land 15 years prior.

“I certainly enjoyed and appreciated her class,” said Fred Ostendorf, a former student of Fiore and lifelong Long Beach resident. “It was very informative and really educational and I was glad I was able to attend it.”

Fiore grew up in New York City, but married a Long Beach police officer, Jim Fiore, in 1963 and moved to the barrier island. An antique dealer by trade, she helped found the Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society in 1980 after discovering a fascinating piece of little-documented Long Beach history dating back 100 years.

Fiore had come across an old Harper’s Weekly, printed in August 1880, that featured the Long Beach Hotel, a resort that predated the Nassau Hotel built by Reynolds in the early 1900’s. The Long Beach Hotel had over 20 cottages, numerous restaurants and cafes, a social hall and bathing pavilion, and was considered one of the largest and most popular new attractions throughout the state. It was also proof that Long Beach’s history could be dated back to 1880 and inspired Fiore, who recognized an antique when she saw one, to then explore into Long Beach’s lesser-known history.

“All the records in Long Beach said it started in 1922, the day it became the city,” Fiore said. “They never counted what went on before.”

Her class covers a wide range of topics, including Long Beach’s internationally influenced architecture, the city’s strategic role in World War I, and how Reynolds first imported and grew grass on nothing but sand.

Over the course of four weeks, Fiore said she sees both old and new Long Beach attend her class who are all eager to learn about their city’s history.

“I think we’re very fortunate to have Roberta doing all this work and doing all the research and putting it all together,” Ostendorf said. “We’re a lucky community.”