Searingtown, an unincorporated area in the county's Town of North Hempstead that extends downward like a clenched fist from the Northern State Parkway, sprang into existence during this explosive era. There is no aggression in the fist. It is only grasping the good life that three suburban generations have lived in Searingtown, drawn by proximity to the city, tidy neighborhoods of one-family homes and a strong public school system.

Good location, residency within the highly regarded Herricks Union Free School District and a North Shore address make for relatively high prices today in an active real estate market where young families, including a growing number of Asian-Americans, are the most frequent buyers.

Aging suburban pioneers, not infrequently Italian-Americans and Jews, long the dominant ethnic groups, have been retiring to Florida or to condominiums outside hamlet borders. But a large Jewish community remains and appears to be growing(Newsday). 

The turnover adds pace to a real estate market in a landlocked hamlet where population has remained steady at around 5,000, with some fluctuations, for three decades. Prices of houses range from the low $300,000's to $600,000 and above, but most go for around $400,000.

Taxes are typically around $8,000. Most lots are a quarter of an acre. No Levittown, Searingtown was from the first a part of the deeper, more thoroughgoing and sustained wave of Nassau development that accompanied the flight to the suburbs sweeping through urban neighborhoods of New York City in the 50's, when roomier and slightly more expensive suburban homes began luring buyers.

A 1942 map shows Searingtown all but taken up by Bloodgood Nurseries, the Shelter Rock Country Club, a handful of estates and a large parcel owned by the Nassau County Boy Scouts. Traces of the now-vanished Vanderbilt Motor Parkway -- the private, banked-curve race track, toll road and prototypalhigh-speed, limited-access roadway built by William K. Vanderbilt early in the century -- still showed on the map, looping through the soon-to-be transformed hamlet.