Living in Lawrence

Lawrence is a village in Nassau County, New York in the United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 6,483.

The Village of Lawrence is in the southwest corner of the Town of Hempstead, adjoining the border with the New York City borough of Queens to the west and near the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Lawrence is one of the "Five Towns", which consists of the villages of Lawrence and Cedarhurst, the hamlets (unincorporated areas) of Woodmere and Inwood, and "The Hewletts", which is made up of the hamlet of Hewlett together with the villages of Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor and Hewlett Neck, along with Woodsburgh.[3]

Old Lawrence, or Back Lawrence, is a part of the Village of Lawrence, comprising many large homes, mansions, beach side villas and former plantations with very large property, a few dating back to the time of the American Revolution. This area, like Hewlett is unique because its rural affluence is similar in character to the more well known Gold Coast of the North Shore instead of being more urbanized like the rest of the South Shore of Nassau County. An interesting pre-Revolutionary home on Long Island, Rock Hall, was home to two prominent families, the Martins and Hewletts, and is now an active museum.

During the second half of the 19th century, it was a main vacation spot for the rich families until the 1890s. A series of hurricanes and nor'easters altered the coastline considerably and destroyed a large beachfront hotel. Lawrence could no longer boast direct access to the sands along the Atlantic Ocean. At the same time, Lawrence began to become more like a modern suburb, a village with schools, public facilities, better roads and a large town area that expanded into what is now today.

The Lawrence station provides Long Island Rail Road service on the Far Rockaway Branch to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn with connections at Jamaica to other parts of Long Island.

A 5-mile drive up Rockaway Turnpike takes you to the Belt Parkway, the Van Wyck Expressway, the Cross Island Parkway, Southern State Parkway and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Lawrence is connected to Atlantic Beach to the south, across Reynolds Channel via the Atlantic Beach Bridge.

For more information go to http://www.villageoflawrence.org/