Local city information for Great Neck, NY

Great Neck is a village in Nassau County, New York, in the U.S., on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the village population was 9,538.

The Village of Great Neck is in the Town of North Hempstead.
The term Great Neck is also commonly applied to the entire peninsula on the north shore, as well as an area south of the peninsula near Lake Success. The larger Great Neck area comprises a residential community of some 40,000 people made up of nine villages as well as unincorporated areas of North Hempstead, of which it is the northwestern quadrant. No governing entity encompasses this larger Great Neck, but it is unified as a postal zone and a school district. To distinguish the Village of Great Neck from the other villages in larger Great Neck, it is sometimes referred to as the old village.

Communities comprising larger Great Neck:

• Village of Great Neck (the old village)
• Village of Great Neck Estates
• Village of Great Neck Plaza where train station is located
• Village of Kensington
• Village of Kings Point
• Village of Lake Success
• Village of Russell Gardens
• Village of Saddle Rock
• Village of Thomaston
• Hamlet of Great Neck Gardens
• Hamlet of Harbor Hills
• Hamlet of Saddle Rock Estates
• Hamlet of University Gardens
• Westernmost portion of the Hamlet of Manhasset, that lies between the villages of Thomaston and Lake Success and has Great Neck postal codes (1102x)

The hamlets are census-designated places that consolidate various unincorporated areas. They are statistical entities and are not recognized locally. However, there are locally recognized Harbor Hills, Saddle Rock Estates, University Gardens, and Manhasset neighborhoods within the hamlet areas. The Manhasset neighborhood (in zip code 11030) is not considered part of Great Neck. The part of the Hamlet of Manhasset that is considered part of Great Neck includes the Great Neck Manor neighborhood. There is no neighborhood known as Great Neck Gardens.

Larger Great Neck is a 25-37 minute commute from Manhattan's Penn Station on the Port Washington Branch of the Long Island Rail Road via the Great Neck station, which is one of the most frequently served in the entire system. Long Island Bus connects the villages to the train station and offers service to several destinations in Nassau and Queens from the station, while the southern part of the Great Neck area can also directly access New York City Bus service on Union Turnpike at the border with Glen Oaks and on Northern Boulevard at the border with Little Neck.

Great Neck, originally called "Madnan's Neck", was settled in the late 17th century, not long after settlers landed on Plymouth Rock. The area had previously been inhabited by the Mattinecock Native Americans.

During the late 19th century Great Neck was the rail head of the Flushing and North Side Railroad, and began the process of converting from a farm village into a commuter town.

In more recent days, Great Neck—in particular the Village of Kings Point—provided a backdrop to F. Scott Fitzgerald's book The Great Gatsby. It was thinly disguised as "West Egg", in counterpoint to Manor Haven/Sands Point, which was the inspiration for the more posh "East Egg" (the next peninsula over on Long Island Sound), Great Neck symbolized the decadence of the Roaring Twenties as it extended out from New York City into the then-remote suburbs. ''The Great Gatsby's themes and characters reflected the real-world transformation that Great Neck was experiencing at the time, as show-business personalities like Sid Caesar and the Marx Brothers bought homes in the hamlet and eventually established it as a haven for Jews, formerly of Brooklyn and the Bronx.

The end of World War II saw a tremendous migration of Ashkenazi Jews from the cramped quarters to the burgeoning suburb. They founded many synagogues and community groups and pushed for stringent educational policies in the town's public schools. Jay Cantor's novel, Great Neck, portrays the eponymous town of this era, with recently installed residents of all stripes trying to secure the brightest futures for their children.

During the 1960s, many residents frequented the local pool and ice-skating complex, Parkwood, but in the past fifteen years attendance has declined as homeowners built their own inground pools. (After the events of September 11, 2001, the ice-skating rink was renamed in honor of Andrew Stergiopoulos, a local resident who was killed in the attack).

Things have changed in Great Neck since the Baby Boomer era. In the 1980s, an influx of affluent Iranian Jews who left their country following the 1979 Islamic Revolution settled in Great Neck. Though the majority of their children attended Great Neck schools, they did not integrate into the existing Ashkenazi temples, instead starting their own Iranian synagogues, where they could follow Mizrahi traditions. The Persian community also established its own grocery shops.

From the late 1990s, the Great Neck peninsula has been home to another Jewish shift. During this time, more observant, Orthodox Jews have moved to the area. This is a similar trend to what has happened in the Five Towns area on the South Shore of Long Island, although Reform and Conservative Jews appear to remain predominant in Great Neck.

On one road, Old Mill Road, there are three synagogues representing the three main branches of American Judaism: Temple Beth-El (Reform), Great Neck Synagogue (Orthodox), and Temple Israel of Great Neck (Conservative). Old Mill Road also has an honorific extra naming, "Waxman Way," in memory of Temple Israel's renowned rabbi, Mordechai Waxman, who led the congregation for 50 years.

Also beginning in the late 1990s and continuing till present day, a number of East Asians, predominantly Chinese and Korean, have been moving into the area. Many of these families move to Great Neck for a better environment for their children as well as the well-known public school education. Great Neck's proximity to ethnic enclaves such as Flushing and Bayside make it ideal for East Asians.

The general trend is that the northern part of Great Neck (north of the LIRR tracks) has a greater number of Iranian families, while the southern part (south of the LIRR tracks) has a larger East Asians population. The African-American population is low in all of Great Neck.

Besides the synagogues, Great Neck also includes St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church and All Saints Episcopal Church. A Mormon church is located just over the border in Little Neck, near two additional synagogues.

The Parkwood pool and skating rink complex, the Village Green and sections of Kings Point Park are managed by the Great Neck Park District. The park district serves all of Great Neck except the villages of Saddle Rock, Great Neck Estates, and Lake Success, and the neighborhoods (not hamlets) of Harbor Hills and University Gardens. The areas not served by the Great Neck Park District each have their own facilities for their residents, run by the villages or civic associations.

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