While researching the history of Roslyn's railroad station in Roslyn Heights recently, Roslyn Landmark Society Board Trustee, Mitchell Schwartz, came across this November 13, 1940 Newsday article announcing Christopher Morley's victory in a passionate battle against the Long Island Rail Road.
Much to the Roslyn icon’s dismay, the LIRR had covered the brick façade of the Roslyn station house with mud-colored stucco during an exterior alteration. Morley voiced strong objections to this destruction of what had previously been described as a “picturesque Swiss chalet for a depot” in the “Switzerland of America.”
Thanks to Morley’s vocal opposition, the LIRR ultimately removed the stucco and re-exposed the brickwork shortly thereafter.
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Kudos for publicizing this article. The issue of the railroad station was broached by Morley in an August 12, 1940 letter to LIRR vice president George LeBoutillier in the Bryant Library's Local History Collection Morley Scrapbooks. The letter is transcribed, along with other related items, in Mr. Morley Takes the Train a volume about CDM's affinity with railroads edited by my friends Jon Lellenberg and Donald Pollock.
Thank you for inspiring me to do at least a cursory look into Mr. Morley. Obviously I knew of the park but never realized his life actually overlapped mine. I was delighted and confused, though, that the iron-clad Republican government of Nassau County had named a park after an author that wrote a 1939 novel, "Kitty Foyle", that seems to have been sympathetic to abortion and had a rather women's lib slant. But then I realized, better check, there was a Democrat that was County Executive for a while, and sure enough, Eugene Nickerson was County Executive 1962-1970. And I think the park was named for Christophe Morley in 1966.
But I have to say that my brief foray into Google and Wikipedia seems to show that Christopher Morley was certainly worthy to name a park after and certainly deserving of further investigation.