Long Island Museum Celebrates 100 Years Of 'The Great Gatsby'

STONY BROOK, NY — The Long Island Museum is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the classic American novel, "The Great Gatsby."

An exhibit featuring antiques from the Gatsby era and highlighting the book's author, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his connection to Long Island, will be on display through October 19.

Fitzgerald, his wife, and their infant daughter moved into a Mediterranean-style house at 6 Gateway Dr. in Great Neck in 1922. From there, the museum said, Fitzgerald "immersed himself in the local community and created an indelible island of imagination, something that resembled but also caricatured what the North Shore of Long Island actually was in the 1920s."

He then penned the book, which was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on April 10, 1925. According to the museum, it received "mixed reviews and was not an immediate commercial success" before eventually "taking on a much larger significance in literary and popular culture, achieving a place in the canon of great American novels."

Museum officials said the exhibition will focus on the history of the book’s creation and reception, as well as both the mythology and the reality of the area that it depicted. Objects will include items from private and public collections related to the book and to the Fitzgeralds’ lives, period clothing from the LIM’s collection, Jazz Age artwork and well-developed vignettes.

The Long Island Museum is located at 1200 Route 25A in Stony Brook.

It is open Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Fridays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free after 5 p.m. on Thursdays.