[Music] Next, the twists and turns of a forgotten highway leads to a journey back in time to Long Island's jazz age and The Great Gatsby.

- Are we in Gatsby's mansion?

- We could be.

- Yeah.

- We definitely could be More than a work of literature, discover the detailed history overflowing in the pages of this iconic book.

Also, a Newark mansion saved from the wrecking ball.

Discover the incredible history witnessed by this home, and how its past is playing into its future.

Drive By History starts now.

[Music] Made possible by the New Jersey Historic Trust, advancing historic preservation in New Jersey for the benefit of future generations.

Also, the New Jersey Historical Commission, enriching the lives of the public by preserving the historical record and advancing interest in and awareness of New Jersey's past.

Every day, thousands of motorists pass by countless history markers and say to themselves, one of these days I'm gonna stop and read that, one of these days I'm gonna find out what happened and why it mattered.

Well, this is that day.

I'm headed to a history marker that talks about people on the move here in the US.

Now, what's so interesting about this particular marker is that it addresses that mobility both figuratively and literally.

I'm Ken Magos, and this is Drive By History.

Today's investigation takes me about 30 miles east of New York City, to East Meadow, Long Island.

Centrally located in Nassau County, friends and neighbors who live in this six square mile suburb prize its convenient location.

They can just as easily race out to the Hamptons as speed off to Broadway.

With easy access to several major highways, it's no surprise that people who live here today are often on the move.

Given the history marker, maybe that's to be expected.

Let's take a look.

It's printed on both sides.

It says "Long Island Motor Parkway.

On this site was the first parkway built exclusively for automobiles.

1908 to 1938.

This section of the Parkway was also used for the historic Vanderbilt Cup races held here from 1908 to 1910."

Two words pop out: Vanderbilt and Automobile.

I'm off to find out more.

[Music] In the 20th century, few inventions shaped our aspirations and our landscape more than the automobile.

How does the Long Island Motor Parkway fit into this truly American history?

To find out more, I'm off to the Guggenheim Library housed in this mansion, the former summer estate of Murry and Leonie Guggenheim, located on the campus of Monmouth University, where Drive By Historian Anthony Bernhard is standing by preparing to shift this investigation into high gear.

- Anthony, I just came from a history marker - that talks about the Long Island Motor Parkway.

- Now on every investigation, I try to piece together - how those local events fit into the national narrative.

- What can you tell me?

- Sure.

Well, I like to drive.

- I know you like to drive, too.

- Most of the time we drive for pragmatic reasons, right?

- To go to the store, to go to the ball game, stuff like that.

- Right.

- But there was a time in history when car travel was both - rare and prestigious... - for sport, Old Sport.

- Yes.

- And that's where the Long Island Motor Parkway fits in.

The history marker said it was built in 1908 and used by the Vanderbilt Cup Races.

- It was built for those races and by Vanderbilt, - William Vanderbilt, who enjoyed driving.

- Now he liked to drive fast.

He had raced in a Grand Prix in Europe - and he wanted to create something - similar here in America.

- So he just buys some land and builds a parkway.

- Yes, but not quite like that.

- First, he held the races on public Long Island roads.

- You have to understand, - the Vanderbilt Cup became a big deal very quickly.

- It was the first international road race in the United States.

- Hundreds of thousands of people turned out.

- Photographers were on hand.

- Some of it was filmed.

- That's what you're seeing here.

- Now, in 1906 during a race - a spectator was struck and killed... - a guy named Kurt Gruner from Passaic, New Jersey.

- I can only imagine the outcry on public roads.

- It took less than a week for a special committee to begin - looking into the creation of a private speedway.

- What they built made history.

- The Long Island Motor Parkway - ran from Queens to Central Long Island.

- It became the nation's first - long distance roadway built for car travel.

- It featured reinforced concrete paving, - as well as bridges and underpasses - to eliminate dangerous intersections.

- So it was truly a road for motorists.

- Now, this wasn't a municipal project, as it would be today.

- It was private and it was expensive.

- It cost millions of dollars.

- But, it was positioned as a benefit for everyone, - so it was open to the public as a toll road... - of course, on days when there weren't races.

- So how much was the toll?

- $2.

- Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

- But adjusted for inflation, that's the equivalent - of $56 today.

- So, who do you think uses it?

- I'm going to go with rich people.

- That's right.

- After 1910, the races are held elsewhere, so - the Long Island Motor Parkway turns into a thoroughfare, - a main route for the rich traveling to - and from their Long Island estates, - Old sport.

- OK, I get the Gatsby reference.

- So Gatsby and Daisy then would have picked up - the Long Island Motor Parkway - as they drove into the City or out to East Egg.

- Is that what you're saying?

- Nothing gets past you, Old Sport.

- It's also where the next leg of this investigation begins.

[Music] To find out more, Anthony sends me to Huntington, - Long Island to Oheka Castle, a French style chateau - that's become a hotel and is open to the public.

- I'm greeted by NYU Professor Dr. Karen Karbiener, and as we stroll the grounds, she tells me that in the 1920s, homes like this one dotted the Long Island landscape.

In fact, there were mansions as far as the eye could see, which is how this part of the North Shore became known as the Gold Coast.

- Tell me about the Gold Coast.

- Tell me about those days.

- Well, it developed just because in the City - the fortunes were being made in New York City, and this was really accessible.

- We're not really that far from New York.

- Look at the view!

- In fact, if you look over at the view, - you can see the Long Island Sound.

This mansion was built in 1919 and privately owned by a wealthy banker named Otto Herman Kahn.

Known for his charm and charisma, Khan was a celebrity in his own right who was often making headlines...sometimes for his financial dealings, other times as an impresario who regularly hosted incredibly lavish parties.

- Can you imagine this lawn flooded with entertainers?

- I'm just... - Rubbing elbows with - Flappers... [Laughter] - with all of the most important cultural icons of the day.

In the 1920s, guests who attended Oheka soirees included some of the most famous faces of the era.

In fact, of any era.

[Music] - Charlie Chaplin, - Douglas Fairbanks, Groucho Marx.

- This was a place to just like relax and party.

When Otto Herman Kahn built this home, the second largest private home ever constructed in America, he clearly expected to need space.

- It's too big for any one family to really inhabit.

- The space was expected to be generous.

- He had these lavish parties - with up to 600 people coming in.

- It's not difficult to imagine... - Well, the scale of this house, though, - 600 people would not be tight.

- That's true.

- You definitely have the room for it.

[Music] As you can see from this historic film, made available to Drive By History by the current owners of Oheka Kahn loved to entertain.

Records are not specific, but at Oheka you probably would have encountered a wide range of personalities, including flappers, redefining femininity with bobbed hair and rising hemlines, jazz ensembles playing new music with syncopated rhythms, and maybe even some wiseguys filling the fountain with bathtub gin.

- Prohibition, you had women getting the vote, you had... - Yeah, it was an amazing time in history.

- Oh yeah, it was a lot of energy in the 1920s.

At the time, the gap between conservatives and liberals had grown from a crack into a chasm, with the former taking hatchets and smashing whiskey barrels in the name of Prohibition, while the latter openly flaunted their disdain for anything or anyone, even remotely traditional.

The culture clash was aggressive and defiant, and it quickly swelled from a din to a roar.

- I love that word roar, because I think it really - represents the era, which was roaring.

- It was loud, it was... yeah, debauched.

Smack in the middle of all that clamor was an author who delighted in the music and the gin, and many other indulgences.

His name: F. Scott Fitzgerald.

He became famous almost overnight after the publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, which is presumed to be based on Fitzgerald's own experiences at Princeton, though augmented and fictionalized.

The initial printing sold out in three days, catapulting Fitzgerald into the limelight and onto the guest list of any and every party.

- And so he's kind of the new It Boy at the time.

- Yeah, and he was incredibly good looking.

- Plus, he had a beautiful wife.

- I mean, why wouldn't you want him at your party?

- Sure.

For his wife, Zelda, also became famous, or perhaps infamous is a better word, in part because the public believed her to be the inspiration for his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned.

Published in 1922, it was also a big hit and adapted into a movie the same year.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald had yet another success again in the same year 1922, a collection of short stories called Tales of the Jazz Age.

- Do you know that Fitzgerald - is credited with inventing that term?

- He coined the term.

- The Jazz Age?

- I didn't know that.

[Music] As we step inside, it's easy to see just how intoxicating these surroundings can be.

- In 1922, he actually moves to Great Neck.

- Basically, the beautiful and the damned propel him - into this lush culture that we're surrounded by, right... - right here.

Given that Fitzgerald lived nearby and that he was a prized guest and that he had a penchant for parties, historians hypothesize he was here at Oheka.

- It is certainly within reason to think about Fitzgerald - and Zelda hanging out here - and just enjoying this incredible space.

While Fitzgerald was reveling in the excesses, he began another novel.

This one would not only become his masterpiece, it would later be considered one of the most important books ever written.

Its title: The Great Gatsby.

Knowing that Fitzgerald drew from his own experiences, here inside Oheka I can't help but make a connection.

- So Karen, I'm looking around this amazing room.

- This library is gorgeous.

- Are we in Gatsby's mansion?

- We could be.

- Yeah.

- We definitely could be.

Karen says, could be because Fitzgerald never identified a single location as inspiration for Gatsby's home.

However, scholars believe Oheka figures prominently, citing a description in the first chapter.

The book's narrator, Nick Carraway, says "It was a colossal affair by any standard.

It was a factual imitation of some Hotel de ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy and a marble swimming pool, and more than 40 acres of lawn and garden.

It was Gatsby's mansion."

- Who would have thought it was possible to step back in time - and into The Great Gatsby's Mansion?

- But here I am.

[Music] And that brings me to an important point.

The writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald not only matter to literature, they also matter to history.

Through his books.

Fitzgerald offers today's readers an insider's view of the era.

- What people say about Fitzgerald is that - he lived it up to write it down, - meaning that he put himself and his era in the work.

What did he write down?

Details...all kinds of details.

"...the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy, with primary colors and hair shorn in strange new ways... By 7:00, the orchestra had arrived.

No thin five piece affair, but a whole pitful of musicians.

...the air is alive with chatter, and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot... - It is really directly from life, those experiences.

- So when you are in Gatsby's mansion in this book, - you are experiencing the jazz age as the Fitzgeralds did.

The Great Gatsby also chronicles the rapidly changing values of the day.

It touches on fidelity... and power.

Of course, wealth... but racism, too.

- You know, just reading it again lately, - I'm reminded of how timely it is, right?

- And how timeless it is.

Timeless, in part due to the book's famed ending, the sudden aggressive, unhappy ending.

- A lot of people forget about that... - the Great Gatsby actually dies at the end.

- The whole dream shatters and nobody goes to his funeral - except Nick Carraway.

- It really represents the end of an era.

The death of Gatsby certainly seems like a metaphor for the stock market crash of 1929, when the boom of the Roaring Twenties was quickly silenced.

The symbolism makes sense, except the Great Gatsby was published four years before the stock market collapsed.

When Fitzgerald was here on Long Island, the good times were still good.

- And I think Fitzgerald was... - was really prescient with this, right?

- He saw it collapsing.

- He wrote that into the book - because he could feel that coming on.

It begs the question: could some people sense that times would come to a tragic end?

Not to say that they could see the future.

They could not.

But I have to wonder if there was a feeling that the excesses enjoyed by so many would come with a price.

That's something Fitzgerald might have been keenly aware of when he was here at Oheka because he was partying with the liberal elite, yet he had a rather conservative upbringing.

- I'm wondering if that fed into why he wrote... - you know, that reality shatters.

- Ken, that's really interesting.

- So are you suggesting that it was a sort of underlying - feeling of guilt that inspired that ending?

- I am.

Yeah.

Whether the ending was prescient or a reckoning or something else, one thing history tells us with certainty: the public didn't care for it.

- And the book was not a success - at the time that it was written.

- Why would you want the party to end - Right.

- before it actually ended?

In fact, it wasn't a success until after World War II and after Fitzgerald's own death.

It seems time needed to pass before the Great Gatsby would appeal to readers en masse.

Perhaps time needed to march forward before the book could be appreciated for what it is: a detailed snapshot of a time gone by.

And as the day draws to a close, I can't help but wonder if F Scott Fitzgerald saw himself not only as a writer, but also as a documentarian, someone who wasn't only taking notes for the sake of his story but for the sake of history.

- It reminds me actually of the last line of the novel, - "So we beat on, boats against the current, - borne back ceaselessly into the past."

I think Fitzgerald knew that time had to go by, so distance could lend perspective so that the Great Gatsby could become more than a great story.

It could become a window into the past when the cocktails were flowing, the jazz was sizzling, and the North Shore of Long Island was gleaming, a dazzling expression of wealth and the boundless American Dream.

[Music] There is history in all men's lives.

So said William Shakespeare.

My next investigation begins now.

Although history is all around us, not all of it has a corresponding history marker.

In fact, a lot of really important history isn't marked at all.

History that was and is at risk of being lost altogether.

One such history takes me to Newark, New Jersey, to the Krueger Scott Mansion.

Built during the Gilded Age by Gottfried Kruger, this mansion was once among the finest homes in Newark, and that's saying something.

Newark was an extremely affluent city in the late 1800s.

By the second half of the 20th century, both Newark and the mansion had fallen on hard times.

The mansion was nearly demolished more than once, saved only due to the tireless efforts of preservationists who felt the history connected to this home was far too important to be bulldozed by so-called progress.

You see, in addition to being a monument from the Gilded Age, this mansion also plays a role in African-American history.

Now there's no history marker here, but I felt that this story was too important to just drive by.

So I'm joined today by Rutgers University Professor Dr. Tiffany Gill, a scholar of black entrepreneurship, to help us learn more about this amazing location.

What can you tell us about the house?

- Well, the house is amazing first of all, - It is.

- and it's right here on what was known as High Street, - which was a real entrepreneurial - sort of civic hub for Black life for the city of Newark - after World War II.

At that time, a phenomenon historians called The Second Great Migration was well underway, with African-Americans on the move dreaming of a better life.

Some of those people moved to Newark with the most successful settling along High Street, now called Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard.

In the years after World War II, this street was literally a boulevard of dreams.

- So we have Father Divine, the religious leader - who also opened up hotels, - had the Divine Hotel here on this same street.

- And so it's part of this bustling community - of African-Americans who had migrated.

- It's part of the Great Migration.

In 1958, this mansion was purchased by an African-American entrepreneur, a woman named Louise Scott.

It's her extraordinary story we focus on right now.

A hard worker from humble beginnings in South Carolina, Newark made her dreams come true.

- Think about her story.

- She started as a domestic worker - and becomes a millionaire in her lifetime.

- So just think about what - that would have represented to people here in Newark, right.

- And it showed really the power of entrepreneurship.

Louise Scott found her calling in cosmetology.

She put herself through beauty school, first working as a stylist, then later as an owner of salons.

Much like Madam C.J.

Walker before her, Scott's success stemmed from a belief that beauty was more than skin deep.

- So personal.

- It's so community oriented.

- Black women really carved a space out, a particular - kind of esthetic, a particular kind of industry that from - its inception, was about not just beautifying people, - but beautifying their lives, using the practices - of hairstyling and fashion as a way into black women's - lives, as a way of making women - feel better about themselves, - which is something that can't be underestimated.

Louise Scott achieved enormous success.

She's believed to be Newark's first African-American woman to become a millionaire.

And because she amassed great wealth, Louise Scott had the means to purchase this spectacular home for cash.

It must have been incredibly satisfying for her to call this mansion home.

- In fact, it wasn't just her home, - as beautiful as that would have been as a home, - but she turned it into - part of her beauty entrepreneurial space.

Louise Scott had a vision, with the mansion squarely at the center of her grand plan.

Not only would she live here, but she would also establish a beauty college here on the first floor of her home.

- She opens up a beauty college so that other women can learn - the trade that had been so successful to her.

Louise Scott was intent on creating opportunity for people from all walks of life.

And, by opening the college in this magnificent mansion, she telegraphed an important message to the community.

Others could transform their circumstances and achieve big things just like she had.

- She was always conscious of women like her, - women who wanted to escape - being domestic workers and move into - owning their own businesses - and being able to move into the post-World War II - black middle class.

Louise Scott threw open her doors wide, quickly going beyond the world of cosmetology.

She firmly believed in the power of business and embraced enterprise of all shapes and sizes, allowing others to also set up shop inside her home.

- It became a space - for black businesses to have their own offices, - so we have doctors and dentists office.

- There was a church meeting here at one point.

- And she actually created what was known as the... - the Scott Cultural Center, which was a space for artists - and for other people in the community - to show their artistic talent.

Louise Scott's home bustled with activity every day of the week.

Christmas time was said to be particularly special, with Scott showering neighborhood children with sweets.

- So it's not just a story about her amassing wealth - as incredible as that is, - but it's also the story about someone who amassed wealth - and understood that unless other African-Americans - were given some kinds of financial opportunities, - it really wouldn't be worth it for her.

Louise Scott's commitment to community was nothing short of remarkable.

Her entrepreneurship and her philanthropy an example to all.

Her home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

And although the mansion fell into disrepair after her death in the 1980s, it's currently being restored to its former glory as part of Newark's renaissance underway today.

In a private interview, the mansion's new owners told me they're going to great lengths to restore the ceilings and walls, but perhaps nothing is more impressive than what they're doing to restore the foundation.

You see, the new owners, an organization known as MakerHoods, intends to create a sustaining community, promising when the mansion reopens, it will be founded on the same principles that were so important to Louise Scott and again, be a hub of entrepreneurship and creativity for people from all walks of life.

- I think it's beautiful that Makerhood is coming in now - and wanting to reclaim this space for the community.

- In many ways, it is a - fulfillment of the dream of Louise Scott [Music] As this day draws to a close.

I can't help but marvel at the incredible history witnessed by the Krueger Scott Mansion.

Of course, it's a surviving monument to Newark's Gilded Age, when the city was rivaled by few.

But it also stands as a tribute to another golden age when African-Americans turned to Newark in search of a better life.

And when an ordinary woman named Louise Scott achieved something extraordinary, capitalizing on her hard earned success not only to lift herself up, but also her community and in the process inspire us all.

See you next time.

[Music] Made possible by the New Jersey Historic Trust, advancing historic preservation in New Jersey for the benefit of future generations.

Also, the New Jersey Historical Commission, enriching the lives of the public by preserving the historical record and advancing interest in and awareness of New Jersey's past.

[Sound Effect]