Ridge, NY real estate market

Ridge sits in the Town of Brookhaven, out at the edge of the Long Island Central Pine Barrens. A sign in the center of the hamlet calls it the Gateway to the Pine Barrens, and that tells you what kind of land this is. The name itself comes from Samuel Randall, a widower from North Stonington, Connecticut who settled the northern part of Ridge in 1738. He always called the terrain "the Ridge," and when his son Stephen and later generations farmed the 4,000 acre plot, the name stuck. It was first known as Randallville, but residents chose Ridge for their postal delivery. You can still find the Randall burial plot near the William Floyd Parkway, with the grave of Lt. Stephen Randall, a Suffolk County Militia veteran of the Battle of Long Island.

The southern history runs through the Longwood Estate. William "Tangier" Smith received an enormous land grant in 1693 stretching from the Carmans River east toward Southampton, and the northern piece of that manor, covering the south side of present day Ridge, was called Longswamp. No house went up there until after the American Revolution. In 1817 William Sydney Smith moved in and renamed it Longwood. The estate passed down through the family until Elbert Clayton Smith took it over in 1955, by then 750 acres surrounded by the growth of Brookhaven National Laboratory and the population around it. After his death in 1967 the estate was carved up for housing developments, but preservation efforts saved the main house and 35 acres, handed to the Town of Brookhaven in 1974. The Smith Estate went onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.

Ridge covers 13.3 square miles, almost all of it land, with just a sliver of water. Housing here runs to 6,336 units as of the last count, giving buyers a fair range of stock to look at, and vacancy rates were low, around 7 percent overall. If you want a piece of the old estate itself, the Smith house and its remaining acreage are town owned land now, not for sale, but worth a look for anyone curious about what the original 81,000 acre manor grant looked like before it became Ridge.