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Hope this will help you. But all the questions you have asked only W.K.Vanderbilt could answer.
Robert McGraw
The Traveling Salesman
The Long Island Motor Parkway may have been William K. Vanderbilt II's grand vision, but it was an auto enthusiast named A.R. Pardington who had the crucial job of selling the idea to the people who owned the land.
As the Long Island Motor Parkway Corp.'s vice president -- and with Vanderbilt driving around Europe -- Pardington spearheaded a massive public relations campaign, promising, as the Evening Telegram put it, that the $2-million road would ``transform Long Island into an Automobile Paradise.''
He went from town to town, trying to convince Long Islanders to either donate or sell some of their land. The value of the land they retained, he predicted, would explode with the coming of the parkway.
Some heeded Pardington's call and donated strips of land. Others agreed to sell. ``The day of the automobile has come,'' Pardington said at the parkway's groundbreaking ceremony in June, 1908, while Willie K. was on his yacht nursing an attack of hay fever. The son of a Methodist minister from Michigan, Arthur Raynor Pardington began his career as a hospital pharmacist in Brooklyn and later went to work for the fledgling New York and New Jersey Telephone Co.
An auto enthusiast, Pardington helped organize the Long Island Automobile Club, one of nine early car clubs that soon banded together to form the American Automobile Association. He helped oversee the Vanderbilt Cup race and later was the referee for one of the early Indianapolis 500 races. When the Long Island Motor Parkway Corp. was formed, Vanderbilt tapped Pardington and made him vice president for construction. Pardington and his family moved to Smithtown, purchasing a house on Jericho Turnpike and building a three-car garage.
In 1913, Pardington moved to Detroit to help create another road: the Lincoln Highway, planned by automobile manufacturers as a way to increase demand for automobiles. Now U.S. 30, the highway stretched across the country, from Jersey City to Oakland, Calif.
Pardington died in Detroit in 1915. Pallbearers included Henry Ford and E.L. Benson, president of the Studebaker Motor Co. His family returned to Smithtown, and his two daughters are buried there
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