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Posted on 08/31/2025 2:35:14 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Before all this, the seaside stretch of Lido Beach, a mere hour outside Manhattan, clung to a fading postcard of its former self. The one with new money elites frolicking along the shoreline. The one with flappers dancing the night away, hair bobbed, frills shimmering. The one with the Lido Hotel in the middle of it all — six stories high and flamingo pink. The gall it took to build this thing. A remnant of the Roaring Twenties. Four hundred and forty rooms, a 9,000-square-foot ballroom, the oceanside solarium. The elaborate, rococo-inspired mega-hotel was built by the same architectural firm as the Waldorf-Astoria.
A vestige of what might’ve been, when some envisioned the town of Long Beach becoming “the Venice of America.”
There was little room left in the imagination by the time the scene changed. It was Aug. 28, 1942, when word spread across Long Island that Navy Department officials announced plans to seize control of the Lido Hotel and Country Club and everything else on-property.
“That’s news to me!” its owner, Frank Seiden, told the Brooklyn Eagle.
By day’s end, signage demanded all guests vacate the property within 24 hours. Everyone, including Seiden, did as told. Common along the Eastern Seaboard during World War II, the U.S. military took what the U.S. military needed. The property along Lido Beach was perfect: nearly 200 acres between the Atlantic Ocean and the intracoastal waterway of Reynolds Channel. The land was especially useful to the Navy thanks to ample free space.
That golf course? It could fit a makeshift city of 40-50 barracks and pop-up hospital facilities. All it needed was a few bulldozers.
That is how this all happened.
How the Lido, a golf course conceived by equal parts audacity and genius, one with a story unlike any other, that...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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I had no idea that golf courses could migrate.
Since we can’t read the full article, can you please give us a synopsis of this article?
Click the link as it goes to the entire article, read enjoy
the photos.
I tried that. The article is behind a login screen; at least it is for me.
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