Guide to Long Island - Sea Cliff

The third edition of Guide To Long Island takes me to a very small town nestled in Long Island's North Shore known as Sea Cliff. 

Sea Cliff is an incorporated village in the Town of Oyster Bay, located right underneath the City of Glen Cove and overlooking Port Washington to the west. This tiny village remains unique to the rest of Long Island in many aspects. Where the majority of Nassau County consists of flat plains, ideal for postwar suburban sprawl, Sea Cliff certainly lives up to its name with having some of the steepest inclines you're likely to see on this blog. This topography means that this area of land has much more of a tight knit village feel with a quaint main street and narrow twisty roads. Sea Cliff also has an incredible boardwalk/ park with incredible views of the estates in Port Washington and the New Rochelle skyline across the Sound.

Per the 2020 census, Sea Cliff has a population of 5062, potentially the smallest place I'll explore in this series. As for transportation, Sea Cliff is served by the Oyster Bay branch of the Long Island Railroad (although the keen eyed readers may notice that the train station is quite far into the City of Glen Cove from the above picture). The most notable motor vehicle arteries are Prospect Avenue, Glen Avenue, and Sea Cliff Avenue.

Just like always, I am going to start with the train station even though it's technically in Glen Cove. The station is quite far from the town center and was quite a walk for me to get here. I don't mind the walk at all, although it isn't ideal for the average resident of Sea Cliff who will most likely drive to catch a train to commute. I'm generally not a fan of this, but given Sea Cliff's terrain it makes sense that the train station is so far out of the way. The station itself is quite nice and although nothing too extraordinary.

The area immediately surrounding the train station has a ton of industrial and abandoned buildings which I thought were quite cool, although they'd ideally be redeveloped.

Alright, now lets get to Sea Cliff proper by exploring the downtown and main street businesses. The Main streets here are much quieter given how much smaller Sea Cliff is, which makes it a lot more pleasant to walk through. I unfortunately came through on a Sunday morning which meant a lot of these businesses and the museum were not open.

As mentioned before, the layout of Sea Cliff's residential block is very unique compared to the rest of Long Island. On top of being very hilly, the roads are very narrow with houses quite close together. This gives the town a sense of togetherness and community that you just don't get in say Levittown with very wide spaced out houses.

On top of having narrow windy residential streets and quaint main streets, Sea Cliff is also home to some incredible waterfront parks with incredible views of the Long Island Sound.

Above photos are a public walkway along Prospect Avenue near the southern part of Sea Cliff's borders.
Below are photos of a much more secluded boardwalk further north towards Glen Cove.

Hope you enjoyed learning about Sea Cliff. Places like this really get at the heart at what I want to accomplish with this blog. Unless you're from Long Island, I highly doubt you would have known about a place like this and hopefully you understand one small corner of the globe a little bit better. For me personally, It's a ton of fun taking trains and busses out here to towns I wouldn't have gone to otherwise. Thanks again for reading and join me next time as I take a trip to the South Shore to visit Lynbrook.