The Oyster Bay Post Office (ZIP code 11771) serves portions of the surrounding villages also, including Oyster Bay Cove, Laurel Hollow, Mill Neck, Muttontown, Centre Island, Cove Neck, and Upper Brookville.

For a six-month period from 1778 to 1779, the Townsend home served as British headquarters for the Queen's Rangers led by Lt. Col. John Graves Simcoe.

[clarification needed] The plot was thwarted when three Americans on patrol captured Andre near West Point, preventing what would have been a disastrous defeat for the colonists in the Revolutionary War.

Other Roosevelt-related landmarks have been restored including Snouder's Drug Store – location of the first telegraph in Oyster Bay, Moore's Building – today the Wild Honey restaurant, and proposals to restore the Oyster Bay Long Island Rail Road Station – home station of TR and the Octagon Hotel – built in 1851 and once home to offices of Governor Roosevelt.

[citation needed] When Hurricane Sandy hit Oyster Bay in 2012, West Shore Road was demolished.

Due to the damages, commuters between Bayville and Oyster Bay had to take a detour through Mill Neck, on-and-off for 4 years.

[6] Oyster Bay consists of 12 villages and 3 unincorporated hamlets: Note: Locust Valley, Matinecock, Lattingtown are also in the Greater Glen Cove area.

Many well-known American celebrities spent their youth in this town; among its better known former residents are musician Billy Joel, who mentions the town in his song The Ballad of Billy the Kid, tennis players John McEnroe and his brother Patrick, actress Heather Matarazzo, authors Thomas Pynchon and Tracy Kidder, basketball coach Rick Pitino of Bayville, who attended St. Dominic's School here, and Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo (Pynchon and Ranaldo attended Oyster Bay High School).

A less distinguished figure from the hamlet's past is Typhoid Mary, whose contagiousness was discovered following an investigation into her employment at a summer home in Oyster Bay in 1906.

William Woodward Jr., accidental victim of 1955's "Shooting of the Century" and subject of Dominic Dunne's book and NBC's The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was also a resident of Oyster Bay.

One of the earliest was opened by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1873, called the Oyster Bay Reading Room and Lyceum, with a focus on history and genealogy.

Others included one run by Christ Church, begun in 1889 by Reverend Henry Homer Washburn, to encourage people to spend less time at saloons.

Then in 1893 the People's Library and Reading Room opened on east Main Street and it is that collection of books which would later be brought to this building.

One of the early fundraising efforts was the laying of a cornerstone by Theodore Roosevelt in 1899, when the land had been donated by Mrs. Harriet Swan, but no plans for the building itself had yet been developed.

In the time between the laying of that cornerstone, and the construction of the actual building, the symbolic masonry corner was lost and has still never been found.

The brick building to the left as you face the front of the library represents the original structure, which was wood frame until 1949, when an extensive renovation took place.

In 1994 the brick and glass additions behind the Bishop House were added on to further expand the facilities which now include a spacious and sunny children's room.