It is also a story full of money. So perhaps it is fitting that the novel and its author have long been popular among developers as well.  There are the Gatsby condominiums on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the Fitzgerald apartment building on the other side of Central Park. There is a Gatsby Lane carved out of a subdivision in Montgomery, Ala., where Mr. Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, was raised. And there is a 50-year-old company created by the real estate titan Peter Sharp and his longtime partner, Norman Peck, that still exists today.  “East Egg,” said Mr. Peck.  Mr. Peck and Mr. Sharp created the company to buy a series of tenement buildings at Second Avenue and East 76th Street, which they hoped to tear down in favor of a grand apartment house; East Egg is the name of the entity that bought those tenements.  In the novel, Mr. Peck explained, wealthy people, including Jay Gatsby, lived in a fictional part of Long Island called West Egg, “but the better people lived in East Egg.”  “We were building an apartment building that was, for us, like East Egg,” he said. “Or at least we thought it had better be.”  Not a charmed moniker, that apartment house never went up, but some tenement buildings still stand.  It is impossible to know for certain, but many believe that the inspiration for West Egg came from a slab of land called Kings Point, which juts up into the Long Island Sound from Great Neck. It is an area now dominated by columns and balustrades, perfectly coiffed hedges, and new waterfront mansions built of stone and pink brick.  So when Stuart Hayim, a developer and a son of Great Neck — as well as a child of enthusiastic Fitzgerald fans, who named another son Scott — was working on a subdivision in the 1980s, he said a decision on what to name a new street there was easy. He called it Gatsby Lane.  “It made all the sense in the world,” Mr. Hayim said. “That’s the history that was there.”  “Though, obviously, it was fiction, so it wasn’t really there,” he said.  Today, Mr. Hayim lives just across Manhasset Bay in Sands Point, which many believe to be the inspiration for East Egg. From there, as from Kings Point, the Fitzgeralds would have been just a short drive away, at least for a few years. From 1922 to 1924, the couple lived in a house in Great Neck at 6 Gateway Drive; it is cream-colored today, with a red tile roof.  Despite the proximity, not everyone in town is convinced of Gatsby Lane’s heritage.  “It’s got no historical significance in any form,” said Richard Schilt, a building inspector for the village of Kings Point.  Regardless, Jay Gatsby might have appreciated Gatsby Lane, where there is an empty 3.4-acre plot for sale for $17 million. And from a marketing standpoint, one of the listing brokers for that property, Mona Kremin of Douglas Elliman, appreciates it as well.  “It’s a nice, affluent name,” Ms. Kremin said. “I think it was very smart.”  Often, that whiff of luxury is precisely the point.  “You’re always looking for something of interest that ties in, so people can get emotionally involved in the marketing,” said Andrew Gerringer, managing director for new business development at the Marketing Directors, who was involved in naming both the Gatsby and the Fitzgerald, in Manhattan. “The best is always a historical reference.”  Both the Gatsby and the Fitzgerald were built in the 1920s, the period when the novel is set, Mr. Gerringer explained.  Though the tale of Gatsby takes place on the shores of Long Island and in the rooms of the Plaza Hotel, the name now pops up all over the country. Online searches turn up a Gatsby Circle in Rock Hill, S.C., a Gatsby Place in Alpharetta, Ga., and a Gatsby Court in Lansing, Mich. There is even a Gatsby Lane in Topping, Va., named a dozen years ago, which is now dotted with prefabricated houses and mobile homes.  But that Gatsby Lane was not named for the book, at least not directly. It was named for a car called the Gatsby.  The four-wheeled Gatsby was first built in the late 1970s, made to look like vehicles from the age of the flappers. The man who named the street, Allen Smith, owns a company that builds replacement parts for the Gatsby.  He thinks that he read the book, but it would have been many years ago, and the book was not the inspiration for the street name. “I can guarantee you,” he said, “it’s for the car.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald and his best-known novel, favorites in high schools and movie studios for nearly a century, have long been popular in marketing real estate as well.