Book excerpt: Chartered in 1834 to provide a route between New York City and Boston, the Long Island Rail Road ran from the Brooklyn waterfront through the center of Long Island to Greenport. The railroad served the agricultural market on Long Island until branches and competing lines eventually developed on the north and south shores of the island and several hundred passenger stations were built. After Penn Station was opened in 1910, the number of passengers commuting between Manhattan and Long Island began to multiply. Today, one hundred twenty-five stations serve the Long Island Rail Road. Long Island Rail Road Stations contains vintage postcards of the old Penn Station, which was demolished in the mid-1960s; the Grand Stairway at the Forest Hills Station, where Theodore Roosevelt delivered his famous unification speech on July 4, 1917; and the Amagansett station building, where Nazi spies boarded a train bound for New York City on June 13, 1942. Many of the historic stations featured in this book have been preserved by local preservation groups, while others have been replaced with modern buildings to accommodate the passengers who commute on the nation's largest commuter railroad.