Deer Park, NY real estate market

Deer Park sits in the pine barrens, up in the northeastern corner of the Town of Babylon in Suffolk County. Charles Wilson got things going in 1853 when he set up a large farm here, about eleven years after the Long Island Rail Road came through in 1842. For most of its history this was farm country, known around the state as a fruit basket, and locally famous for growing dahlias. A post office opened in 1851, closed for a stretch, then reopened in 1873. Before World War II the area had two industries worth naming: the Walker and Conklin brick works over in what is now Wheatley Heights, and the Golden Pickle Works, which started up in 1902.

The postwar boom is what ended the farming era and turned Deer Park into a built out hamlet. Along the way it picked up some unusual neighbors. Edgewood State Hospital ran here from 1938 to 1969, starting as a tuberculosis sanatorium and later serving as an Army hospital during the war. Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation put a factory in Deer Park in 1956. There was even a Deer Park Airport, open from 1946 to 1974, before that land got redeveloped for other uses. More recently, the Tanger Outlets at the Arches, a 300 million dollar shopping mall, opened here on October 22, 2008.

Geographically Deer Park covers 6.2 square miles, all land, bordered by Wyandanch and Wheatley Heights to the west, Dix Hills in the Town of Huntington to the north, Brentwood and Baywood in the Town of Islip to the east, and North Babylon to the south. The Long Island Rail Road has served the area since 1842 through the Deer Park station, though buyers should know that station has actually sat in neighboring Baywood and Brentwood since 1987, not in Deer Park itself. Worth checking before you assume train access means a Deer Park address.