Ancient cultures of
indigenous peoples had lived in the area for thousands of years. At the time of European contact, bands of the
Lenape (Delaware) nation inhabited western Long Island and the areas along today's
New York Harbor and adjacent
New Jersey, as well as further south down the coast, through present-day
Pennsylvania and
Delaware, and along the
Delaware River. They spoke an
Algonquian language. By 1600, however, the band inhabiting this local area was called the
Matinecock (Metoac), after their location.
17th Century Glen Cove was used as a
port by the
English, and for those coming and going further inland to
New England. On May 24, 1668, Joseph Carpenter of
Warwick,
Rhode Island, purchased about of land to the northwest of the Town of
Oyster Bay from the Matinecock. Later that year, he admitted four male residents of Oyster Bay as co-partners in the project—the brothers Nathaniel, Daniel, and Robert Coles along with Nicholas Simkins. The five young men, known as
The Five Proprietors, named the settlement 'Musketa Cove Plantation';
musketa meaning "place of rushes" in the
Lenape language.
19th Century In the 1830s,
steamboats started regular service on
Long Island Sound, between New York City and Musketa Cove, arriving at a point still called The Landing. As the Lenape word
Musketa was incorrectly associated with the English word
mosquito, in 1834, residents changed the name officially to Glen Cove; this was said to be taken from a misheard suggestion of
Glencoe (referring to
Glencoe, Scotland or Glencoe,
Nova Scotia). Glen Cove added to its population as workers arrived for jobs at the Duryea Corn Starch factory, which operated until 1900. The name Duryea was suggested as a name to replace Mosquito Cove; however, it was later rejected. By 1850, Glen Cove had become a popular summer resort for New York City residents. The
Long Island Rail Road was extended to Glen Cove in 1867, providing quicker, more frequent services to New York City. The availability of the train, and the town's location on Long Island Sound, made it attractive to year-round residents, thus the population increased. On the morning of July 3, 1915, while Morgan and his wife were having breakfast with the British Ambassador Sir
Cecil Spring Rice, a gunman entered the mansion and shot Morgan twice. The gunman was a former Harvard instructor,
Erich Muenter, who in 1906 poisoned his wife and assumed a new identity and taught at Cornell under the name "Frank Holt." The gunman was arraigned at the Town of Oyster Bar Courthouse, which today is the home of the North Shore Historical Museum. On January 1, 1918, Glen Cove became an independent city, separating from the Town of Oyster Bay, after 250 years. The
incorporation was driven by a desire for its tax revenues to be used locally, rather than distributed throughout Oyster Bay. Glen Cove, at the time, was an especially wealthy part of the town, but the town's provisions for Glen Cove's police service and roads were seen as "inadequate", given the amount of taxes levied. It was unusual in that Glen Cove was incorporated as a city without ever having been an incorporated
village. By the mid-20th Century, most of the
mansions had been converted from single-family use.
Winfield Hall, the former estate of F.W. Woolworth, remains privately owned. Altogether, five Pratt families owned a total of about in the area. John Teele Pratt's estate (
The Manor, designed by
Charles A. Platt) is operated as the Glen Cove Mansion Hotel and Conference Center. The Braes, the country estate of
Herbert L. Pratt, was purchased by the
Webb Institute in 1945, and by 1947 housed a college for naval architecture and engineering. George DuPont Pratt's estate,
Killenworth, was purchased by the
Soviet Union in 1951, for both guests and staff of its
United Nations (UN) delegation. In 1960, while attending UN meetings, Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev and
Cuban President
Fidel Castro stayed at Killenworth. Glen Cove's population grew rapidly after
World War II. Residential developments replaced pastures and farms. Many new residents were second- or third-generation children of Eastern and
Southern European immigrants from
Queens or
Brooklyn. Many local
African Americans were descended from
slaves of the
colonial period, when colonists had imported enslaved West Africans for domestic and farm labor. Still others came to
New York City and surrounding areas during the
Great Migration, in the first half of the 20th Century. Since the late 20th Century, newer Glen Cove residents have been mostly
Latin American,
East Asian or
South Asian. Glen Cove has a
Sikh gurdwara. ==Geography==