The Glen Island Casino was a springboard to success during the 1930s Big Band Era, including that of Ozzie Nelson, Charlie Barnet, Claude Thornhill, Les Brown, The Dorsey Brothers and Glenn Miller.

[4] The park's original design exhibited the five cultures of the western world on individual islands linked together with piers and causeways.

Cromwell's active participation in events leading up to the American Revolution, in opposition to the Patriot cause, brought him disaster, and his property was confiscated.

At the center of the island DePau built a grand mansion surrounded by well landscaped grounds and fish ponds, and containing hot houses, bathing facilities, billiard rooms, and a bowling alley.

He used his home to entertain public figures including the singer Jenny Lind and U.S. political leader and statesman Daniel Webster, who met and married his second wife in New Rochelle.

Seventeen years later Schmidt died, and his executors sold the island to entrepreneur John H. Starin for use as a country residence.

[12] For a small excursion fee, steamships carried countless New York families to this summer resort to enjoy its bathing pavilions, fine food and wines at the Grand Cafe, and the scenic beauty of Long Island Sound.

The walkways along the harbor were lined with colorful flowers, classic bronze statues, and a natural spring that provided cool, fresh water.

Included among its attractions were musical entertainment and performance bandstands, a camera obscura, a Grand Cafe, an aviary, greenhouses, stone castles, a Dutch mill, and a Chinese pagoda.

[15] There was also a nationally recognized Museum of Natural History which housed mummies from 332 B.C., Native American relics of the Stone Age, and other rare antiquities, along with the first fire engine used in New York State, several meteors, and a giant stuffed white whale.

[17] Starin's Island, internationally acclaimed as "one of the most beautiful spots in America," and "the first summer resort in the United States, if not the world", preceded Disneyland as the first "theme park" by many years.

However, despite the large number of visitors, Starin stressed the well-behaved nature of the crowds and the orderly character of the experience, governed by a "middle-class code of conduct."

One of the effects of Glen Island's popularity in the beginning of the twentieth century was the building boom in New Rochelle, which had rapidly grown into a summer resort community.

The beginning of the end of the island's heyday came on June 15, 1904 with the General Slocum disaster, which burned in Hellgate with a loss of more than 1,000 lives.

On January 29, 1910, The New Rochelle Pioneer reported that the Starin family had sold Glen Island to Ignatz Roth, a woolen importer of 577 Broome Street, New York City, for approximately $600,000.

[24] The Glen Island Casino dining hall rose on the foundation of the Grand Cafe, one of the few structures remaining from Starin's park.

The building opened into a series of balconies overlooking the Long Island Sound, which made it an attractive dining and entertaining location.