"The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people."

Location:   West Hills, New York
Year:   1810

One of America's greatest poets, Walt Whitman, was born in the village of West Hills near Huntington in 1819. The house Whitman was born in was built by Whitman's father in 1810, and is one of the few remaining examples of Long Island colloquial architecture. 

 

The house became a New York State Historic Site in 1957, and a National Historic Site (and listed on the National Register of Historic Places) in 1985. thus saving the house from the ever more-densely crammed reality of Long Island.