Since its founding in the late 17th century as a mill town, Glen Cove has been simultaneously rural and industrial, patrician and working class. A city of multiple ethnicities and close family ties, Glen Cove has been home to generations of immigrants who came to work and stayed to live, as well as to the children of America's elite who built their summer homes on the shores of Hempstead Harbor. In Glen Cove Revisited, "The Heart of the Gold Coast" is seen as only insiders know it, through images of the mill ponds and barnyards, estates and factories, schools and neighborhoods, and the people, famous and unknown, which make up this microcosm of America.