Lawrence, NY

Two municipal purchases still shape Lawrence more than a century after its resort era. The village acquired its golf course in 1938 and bought Hicks Beach and adjoining wetlands along Reynolds Channel in 1952. Today the recreation complex includes a village-owned 18-hole course and driving range, a marina with 135 rental slips, nine outdoor Har-Tru tennis courts, and a clubhouse restaurant open to the public. The arrangement preserves a large recreational and waterfront district in a village of only 3.72 square miles. It also carries forward Lawrence's origins: the Lawrence brothers assembled land in the 1850s for summer visitors from New York City, built the present station and connecting roads, and helped spur the development that led to incorporation in 1897. Some of the large seasonal houses survive in the area known locally as Back Lawrence. The present-day village is small, expensive, and notably settled.

Lawrence had an estimated 6,847 residents in July 2025. For 2020 through 2024, 81.3 percent of occupied homes were owner-occupied, the median value of those homes was $1,623,200, and 94.4 percent of people age one or older had remained in the same home over the preceding year. The mean trip to work was 38.8 minutes. Lawrence station is on the Long Island Rail Road's Far Rockaway Branch; the May-to-September 2026 timetable routed service through Jamaica toward Penn Station and Grand Central, with local bus connections at Lawrence. At 280 Central Avenue, Peninsula Public Library adds study booths, locker pickup, mobile printing, a Library of Things, museum passes, notary appointments, tutoring and résumé help, and digital books and films. Rail commuting, municipal recreation, and a service-rich library sit within a street pattern first laid out for nineteenth-century summer estates.