When a coherent community grew up in the area by 1803, prominent local citizens sought to adopt a new name.

An influential local lady, Mrs. Conklin, was used to living inland in what is now considered Dix Hills and was at unease with the home site that her grandchildren would be raised in.

The bible-reading Mrs. Conklin compared the new hamlet to the biblical city of Babylon and proposed that name in apparent defiance of the area's rather bawdy reputation as a stop-over place for travelers on Long Island's south shore.

In July 1814, survivors of the Battle of Valparaiso were led by Captain David Porter through the Fire Island Inlet (which would have been a very difficult task using simply oars) and up to Babylon via Sumpawams Creek.

[7] Villagers were shocked to see armed sailors heading into town, and it took time to convince some of the more prominent citizens that Captain Porter was not a British agent.

This led many affluent individuals and families to reside at Babylon's seaside resorts, both on the mainland and on barrier beach islands.

Those of even greater wealth would have homes or compounds built on the shore or barrier beach islands for vacationing.

It was constructed in 1882 by August Belmont, the LIRR and resort entrepreneur on the former estate of Brooklyn railroad magnate Electus B. Litchfield.

Financing was provided by a syndicate headed by Long Island Rail Road President, Austin Corbin.

After about a decade of disuse, it was finally demolished in 1904, with some of the material from the structure being used to build homes west of the lake in the neighborhood now known as Argyle Park.

In 1921, the land that is now the Argyle Park was donated for passive recreation to the Village of Babylon, by J. Stanley Foster, Esq.

The old mill is claimed to be the first permanent structure in the Village area and was constructed for Judge Garrett Montfort and operated by the Oakley family for approximately 100 years.

Nathaniel Conklin also owned the mill and in its final years, ownership was in the hands of David Ricketts, the second mayor of the Village.

The park belonged to the estate of Effingham Sutton that later came into the ownership of Edwin Hawley, a U.S. railroad tycoon.

The overflow pool from Hawley's Fall opens into two tunnels beneath Main Street that drain into Sumpawams River, known locally as East Creek, and eventually into Great South Bay.

The village also has one of Long Island's older continuous African-American communities, of which the employees of the Argyle are said to have formed the core.

Another prominent African-American, the film actress Thelma (Butterfly) McQueen, moved with her family from her birthplace of Tampa, Florida to live on Cottage Row in Babylon, where she went on to graduate from Babylon High School and then pursued her acting career before later attending several universities and attaining a degree in political science.

Cottage Row still exists but no longer has any housing on it, falling prey to parking space for business district stores.

A statue of Robert Moses was erected in front of the Village Hall on Main Street (Montauk Highway) in 2003.

As a result, there is a mix of building styles, including pre-Civil War, colonial, Victorian, and more recent designs.

Nearer the shore, much of the housing was originally summer properties, including mansions and estates, cottages and bungalows: the latter two, virtually all now winterized.

Most of the affluent homes built in these new areas were large ranch houses, popular in the time of building, but much less favored today.

In the last decade and continuing to the present, many of these houses have been expanded by adding a story and changing their style to more colonial appearance.

Babylon Village has also experienced the modern phenomenon in which small sound houses on desirable lots have been purchased and torn down by affluent recent purchasers and replaced with houses as large as zoning will permit, meaning that the new home builder has paid the price of a home just to obtain the lot.

The train station is also a hub for several buses run by Suffolk County Transit:[11] Babylon village is primarily served by Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in the nearby hamlet of West Islip, and by Southside Hospital in the nearby hamlet of Bay Shore.