Manorville, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

Manorville is an unincorporated hamlet of the Town of Brookhaven; the Census Bureau tabulates it as the Manorville CDP.^[11] Newsday's Long Island history series reports that historians are certain Manorville lay within the huge tract known in the 1700s as the Manor of St. George, granted to William (Tangier) Smith in a royal patent of 1693, and that the Smith family did not own the land long: in 1721 it was sold to a group of colonists from Southold.^[1]

A natural kettle-hole depression south of the hamlet center is said to have hidden a band of Patriots during the Revolutionary War; Newsday's account holds that the hole was named for a Captain Punk, who hid there with his men to avoid detection by the British, and that some early residents called Manorville "Punk's Hole."^[1]

When the railroad reached the hamlet in 1844, the station was named St. George's Manor, but the first station agent, Seth Raynor, was an ardent Patriot who resented the reference to the English king's patron saint; Newsday reports he painted over "St. George's," leaving "Manor," and that the next year a post office was opened, and the hamlet was designated Manorville.^[1] The hamlet was mostly forest and served as a fuel stop for the railroad's early wood-burning locomotives, with laborers sawing cordwood for passing trains while travelers dined at local hotels.^[1] By the late 1870s a Massachusetts entrepreneur, George W. Davis, had converted part of North Manorville into cranberry bogs; more than 25,000 bushels of cranberries were shipped annually by railroad to New York City under the brand name Blue Diamond, before the bogs went out of use.^[1]

In the twentieth century the federal government expanded its Grumman Aircraft Corporation holdings eastward into the area: a 1962 federal court opinion recites that in a prior condemnation in 1952 and 1953 the government had acquired 4,500 acres of land for development and use by Gruman Aircraft Corporation in assembling and testing of aircraft, and that a further 1,108-acre taking, valued as of November 10, 1959, was an expansion of that acquisition, with most of the additional land in the Town of Riverhead and the balance in the Town of Brookhaven.^[9]

A roughly 500-acre working farm belt in the hamlet, described in a 2007 appellate opinion as "the largest and most contiguous belt of productive agricultural land" remaining in the Town, is known as the Manorville Farmland Protection Area.^[8] In 2006 the Brookhaven Town Board resolved to acquire a 39-acre parcel there by eminent domain rather than allow its residential development, and the Appellate Division, over a dissent, upheld the taking as serving the public purpose of preserving the rural, agricultural character of the area.^[8]

How the roads got here

The Long Island Expressway runs through Manorville; NYSDOT's own route description of I-495 states that it runs on Long Island Expressway to Riverhead (NY 25), placing Manorville along the highway's final eastbound stretch before its Suffolk County terminus.^[6]

Suffolk County's official road inventory lists County Road 111 as "Port Jefferson Westhampton Road / Captian Daniel Roe Highway," running from about 300 feet north of the LIE's north service road south to NYS Route 27 (Sunrise Highway)'s south service road — the county's own spelling of "Captain" in that listing.^[7] The Manorville Fire Department's own incident reports confirm the road's local significance, describing members closing "the southbound lanes of County Road 111 so the bikers can ride with ease from the Long Island Expressway" during an annual procession, and separately responding to a motor-vehicle crash on County Road 111 with a person trapped.^[16]

Moriches Middle Island Road, a Brookhaven-maintained road through the hamlet, was the site of a Town Highway Department snow-and-ice truck's collision with a passing vehicle in February 2005, litigated as Lobello v. Town of Brookhaven; the case turned on Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1103(b), which limits liability for vehicles actually engaged in highway work.^[10]

Law and legal history

In Matter of Aspen Creek Estates, Ltd. v. Town of Brookhaven, 47 A.D.3d 267 (2d Dept. 2007), a developer that had purchased a 39-acre parcel in the Manorville Farmland Protection Area for residential construction challenged the Town's decision to condemn the property rather than permit development.^[8] The Appellate Division majority confirmed the Town's determination, holding that the record supported condemnation for the public purpose of preserving farmland and the area's rural character, over a dissent; the case is a leading Second Department authority on the public-purpose requirement for eminent domain used to preserve open space.^[8]

In Lobello v. Town of Brookhaven, the Appellate Division affirmed summary judgment for the Town, the Highway Department, and its truck operator after a February 10, 2005 nighttime collision on Moriches Middle Island Road, holding that a Town dump truck spreading salt and sand near an icy curve was "actually engaged in work on a highway" under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1103(b), so that only reckless-disregard liability, not ordinary negligence, applied.^[10]

Federal condemnation reached the hamlet's edge in the 1950s and early 1960s as the government expanded the Grumman Aircraft Corporation's Calverton-area holdings. In United States v. 1,108 Acres of Land, 204 F. Supp. 737 (E.D.N.Y. 1962), the district court fixed just compensation for parcels in the Towns of Riverhead and Brookhaven taken as of November 10, 1959, in a proceeding the court described as an expansion of a 1952-1953 condemnation of 4,500 acres for the aircraft manufacturer.^[9]

Government, courts and policing

Manorville has no government of its own; it is an unincorporated hamlet of the Town of Brookhaven, itself, by its own description, "the largest town in Suffolk County."^[14] The Town has no police department of its own — the Suffolk County Police Department's Sixth Precinct, headquartered at 400 Middle Country Road in Selden, patrols north-central and northern Brookhaven hamlets, describing its own mission as protecting and serving "several hamlets and incorporated villages within the Town of Brookhaven (North)."^[12]

Brookhaven's own municipal code, like most New York municipalities, requires prior written notice of a road or sidewalk defect before the Town can be sued over it; the Town Code's Chapter 84 is titled "Notice of Defective or Dangerous Conditions."^[4] More serious criminal matters, civil actions, and appeals from town and village justice courts are heard at the Suffolk County court complex, 400 Carleton Avenue, Central Islip, seat of the 10th Judicial District's Suffolk County administration.^[5]

Railroad and transit

The Long Island Rail Road opened a station in the hamlet in 1844 under the name St. George's Manor, later shortened to Manor and then folded into the renamed hamlet of Manorville; the station served as a wood and, later, farm-produce shipping point for the surrounding countryside.^[1]