They are not as well known as local icons William Floyd, Tangier Smith, or Walter T. Shirley, but Arthur and Warren Smadbeck also played a significant role in the development of Mastic.
In the 1920s, the owners of the Home Guardian Company drew new residents to the area through ads in the Brooklyn Citizen newspaper offering lots for $55. For $10 down and $3 monthly payments, along with a three-month subscription, a “Pre-Boom” purchase would get you a “marvelous vacation spot where your family can spend weekends during the hot summer months, enjoying all the delights of a cozy little home in the country,” their ad bragged. “There is not a more beautiful, high and dry spot on the South Shore of Long Island.”
The Smadbecks urged: “Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. You don’t have to dream about how Mastic Park will look someday. It is developed right now. The Forge Riverfront is beautifully landscaped. A post office, fire department, stores, and the Mastic Station of the Long Island Rail Road are already on the property.”
Demand for the lots was great, with over 15,000 purchased through the subscription campaign, which boasted: “This is positively a wonderful chance to buy lots in Mastic Park at a fraction of their real value. The Brooklyn Citizen is a highly reputable and long-established family newspaper. Its vast resources are behind every lot bought.”
According to “A History of the Mastic Peninsula,” the new community was protected by the volunteers of the Mastic Chemical Company #1, which built its first firehouse in 1925 on Mastic Road. Nearby was the Mastic Train Station, which stayed busy bringing vacationers out to their new Eden. The first line was built in 1883 and was called the South Side Railroad. It brought out the materials for some of the area’s great estates, which were carved out of the early holdings of the Floyd and Smith families.
The Mastic Station housed a Western Union office where telegraph messages were sent and received over lines that followed the train tracks. When Shirley started developing his community in the 1950s, he convinced the railroad to relocate the station to William Floyd Parkway, where it remains today.
“If a train was going through without stopping, the station master could give a message to the train's engineer on a piece of paper attached to a string and looped on a pole,” according to the local history book, which was published by the Mastic Peninsula Historical Society. “The engineer would put his arm through the loop of the string as he passed without stopping and would pull in the message with the string.”
The messages went to the businesses that began popping up in buildings that are still there today, including McClean’s Market, now the Centro America Mini Market, and Lewis Parr’s Gas Station and General Store, a Brookhaven Town landmark that’s now Mastic Liquors. The Movies at Mastic shopping center and the property leading to the Forge River Nursery were once Swift Stream Duck Farm, operated by Joseph T. Titmus, whose former home is still on the site.
The Mastic community reveres those who served in the armed forces. Every year, a ceremony takes place at the Mastic Memorial on Montauk Highway to honor those from the area who gave all in service to their country. These include Water Tender 3rd Class John A. Eppig, Jr., who was reported missing in action by the Navy during World War II and the only known Mastic resident to have died during the war. Army PFC Leslie Paul Bernstein is also honored. He was killed during the Vietnam War and the North Titmus bridge over Sunrise Highway was named for him. A plaque also stands in Mastic for Army SPC Thomas Wilwerth, who was killed in Iraq.
The pillars of an old sign welcoming residents to the community can still be seen on Mastic Road, a memory that follows in the footsteps of the Blue Blood estate owners, Revolutionary War heroes, and even the ancient Unkechaug Indians who preceded them. It was the native inhabitants who named the place, first calling it “Massatuck” and from there, “Mastik,” to the current Mastic.