Editing Wyandanch, New York (section)

===Ethnic developments===
[[File:New York - Woodhaven through Wyandanch - NARA - 68145617 (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|Aerial view of Wyandanch in 1931]]
{{More citations needed|date=August 2020}}
Between 1880 and 1955, the dominant ethnic groups in Wyandanch were the [[German-American]]s and [[Austrian-American]]s. The earliest homes built in Wyandanch south of the LIRR were built by German and Austrian-American families. About a hundred "honest and frugal" German and Austrian-American families lived in Sheet Nine of the "City of Breslau" neighborhood as early as the 1880s. Germans and Austrians also worked in the Wyandance Brick and Terra Cotta works; prosperous German- and Austrian-Americans also lived in the hilly, secluded and sylvan Carintha Heights section, west of Conklin Street, which was developed by Brosl Hasslacher after the construction of the [[Long Island Motor Parkway]].

Beginning in the 1920s and extending into the 1930s, working-class settlers (recently arrived from [[County Donegal]] in Ireland) began building small wood-frame [[bungalow]]-type homes in the fire-prone pine barrens in Wyandance Springs Park-there were no springs, no park and no roads-and in Home Acres. Irish and Irish-American families built homes on land they had purchased in the 1920s [[real estate bubble|land bubble]] in Wyandance Spring Park or Home Acres. The newcomers wanted to escape from the crowded and economically depressed conditions in [[Manhattan]] and [[The Bronx]], and yet be within an hour's ride of the "City" on the LIRR.<ref>See "Pine Barren Pioneers," Long Island Forum, October 1982.</ref> More affluent and prominent Irish-American families in Wyandanch lived nearer the "village" in more prosperous homes with larger plots of land.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

[[African-American]]s have lived in Wyandanch since the 1920s, when African-American families bought plots of land and built their own homes in the "Little Farms" section of the [[West Babylon Union Free School District|West Babylon School District]] between Straight Path, Little East Neck Road and Gordon Avenue.<ref>Douglas, "Pine Barren Pioneers," Long Island Forum, December 1982</ref> In the Upper Little Farms section bounded by Straight Path, Little East Neck Road and Grunwedel Avenue (now Patton Avenue) in the Wyandanch School District pioneering upwardly mobile African-American families also began building their own homes. Mortimer Cumberbach and Ignatius Davidson opened their C and D Cement Block Corp. on Booker Avenue at Straight Path on December 6, 1928; as late as the mid-1950s, C & D Cement Block was the only large business owned and operated by African-Americans in Suffolk County.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

In the 1950s and 1960s, African-American families established homes south of the LIRR in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these families—both middle class and working class—purchased homes in Wyandanch because they were denied opportunities to move into other fast-developing white housing tracts on Long Island (such as [[Levittown, New York|Levittown]]) due to exclusionist real estate practices: steering, restrictive covenants, red-lining or price points.{{Citation needed|date=July 2011}} The rapid development of Wyandanch in the 1950s as one of the largest African-American communities in Suffolk County transformed Wyandanch politically into a hamlet which by 1960 voted overwhelmingly [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]]. In the 1950s and 1960s, the political interest of African-Americans in Wyandanch was mainly focused on winning seats on the Wyandanch Board of Education.<ref>"Non-Racial Dwellings Opened at Wyandanch," New York Times, March 11, 1951, 219; Louis B Schlivek, "Wyandanch: A Case Study in Conflict Over Subsidized Housing," in The Future of Suffolk County: A Supplement to the Second Regional Plan: A Draft For Discussion," November 1974: 52–56; Richard Koubeck, Wyandanch: A Political Profile of an African-American Suburb, 1971.</ref>

In March 1951, Taca Homes, Inc. offered expandable four-room Cape Cod style homes for sale in Wyandanch on a "non-racial" basis at the Carver Park development at Straight Path and Booker Avenue. The 59 first stage homes with basement, hot-water heat and tile baths sold for $7,200 and were eligible for [[Federal Housing Administration]] loan insurance. Veterans were told that they only need put $365 down and could have a 30-year 4% mortgage. (See Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 8, 1951) Carver Park was advertised as "interracial housing". (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 8, 1951) Homes in the  first and second sections of Carver Park were purchased almost exclusively by African-Americans.<ref>(Long Island Star-Journal, February 20, 1953)</ref> These homes required $600 down and veterans only had to pay $58.50 per month.<ref>See New York Age, March 22, 1952</ref> The building of Carver Park and then the construction of Lincoln Park in 1956, with over 400 homes combined, triggered the transformation of Wyandanch from a mostly working class white community in 1950 to a majority working class African-American community in 1960, and in turn this caused [[white flight]]: many of the whites who lived south of the LIRR moved and lower middle class African-Americans bought or built modest, individual homes in Wyandanch Springs Park and in the "Tree streets" area east of Straight Path.{{Citation needed|date=July 2011}} In the 1960s many whites living in the Wyandanch school district #9 north of the Long Island Railroad in the Wyandanch School District also relocated.

[[Hispanic-American]] families began to settle in Wyandanch in the late 1940s since the community offered affordable housing and land, within easy commuting distance of nearby defense plants and [[Pilgrim Psychiatric Center|Pilgrim]], [[Edgewood State Hospital|Edgewood]], [[Central Islip Psychiatric Center|Central Islip]], and [[Kings Park Psychiatric Center|Kings Park]] State Psychiatric Centers - where jobs were plentiful.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}