West Hempstead Home Bureau

The picture above comes from the Feb 19, 1922 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle, which featured the opening of the West Hempstead Home Bureau clubhouse, located on Woodfield (now Woodlawn) Rd. Their club house was significant in that it was the first community house to be built in WH that wasn't a school or church. Home bureaus existed across the state and were formed to promote various aspects of home economics to local communities, a function that was ostensibly an outgrowth of the various farm bureaus and agricultural societies that existed in NY the early part of the 20th century. The modest house above was formally opened on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 1922.

The land for the home was donated by James Bacon and his sister Lavinia, who owned a large estate on the corner of Hempstead Ave and Woodlawn Rd. (It wasn't until after 1910 that Woodfield Rd was extended north past Woodlawn to connect with Westminster Rd. Woodfield curved westward and continued to Hempstead Ave where Woodlawn currently runs. When the northerly extension was built, it was originally named Pine St. Eventually, Woodfield Rd. was remapped into a straight north-south arterial, and to avoid confusion, the street that curved westward was renamed Woodlawn). The estate was an inheritance from their father Thomas H. Bacon, for years the general manager of the Queens (and later Nassau) County Agricultural Society. The local home bureau was founded in 1918 with the help of Mrs. Francis B. Taylor, among others. Lavinia Bacon was its president until her untimely death in 1937. In its heyday, the Home Bureau held fairs, fashion shows, brought in speakers and held community picnics. Before her death, Ms. Bacon was credited with increasing the local membership to 1,800 women. As a posthumous tribute, the statewide Home Bureau federation named the award given to the local chapter who gained the largest percentage in membership after Ms. Bacon.

In 1942, the remainder of the Bacon estate was sold to the American Legion and the present Cathedral Post was built in 1955. The American Legion then sold most of its property in 1958 to the Nassau Community Temple, West Hempstead's first synagogue, which was quickly running out of space in their first location on Woodfield Rd. (The original synagogue building, now vacant, is the Quonset hut where Thirsty Beverage used to be located). Nassau Community Temple built their edifice at the NE corner of Hempstead and Woodlawn in 1960, but in 1993, they disbanded and sold their building to the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, which now uses it as their early childhood center.

The West Hempstead Home Bureau eventually was taken over by the Cornell Cooperative Extension which continues to provide educational domestic programs to the community.

It is a tribute to the Bacon family and their service to our community that their estate was not subdivided for private homes, as were so many farms and estates in our neighborhood, but remains designated for community use in some form or another.

As can be seen from the now photo below, very little has changed from when the house was built, almost 90 years ago.

Mayfair Avenue and St. Giles the Cripple

Previously we noted that WH attorney Francis B. Taylor had purchased a piece of property from John T. Hanna along Hempstead Turnpike in 1889. The following year, Hanna and Taylor petitioned the Town Highway Dept. to open up a road that bordered their property, that would run north-south between Hempstead Turnpike and First Avenue in Garden City. This road would become known as Mayfair Avenue. At that time, the only approach to Garden City from West Hempstead was Rockaway Ave (Cherry Valley Ave came in from the southwest). The Garden City Company vehemently opposed the opening of this road, ostensibly for two reasons: 1) It would detract from the exclusivity of the Village to have another road lead into town. 2) Hanna & Taylor's motives were to subdivide the northern sections of their property for new residences. The Garden City Co did not want to have a competing residential development so close to their village.

As it turned out, the Highway Dept. sided with Hanna & Taylor and Mayfair Avenue was built.

In 1891, shortly after the Mayfair petition was approved, an Episcopalian nun named Sister Sarah founded a hospital for children in Brooklyn called St. Giles the Cripple. The hospital was unique in that it not only provided medical services to children, but also social and educational services as well. The hospital filled a real need and quickly got off the ground and was now left with one problem. During the summer when people fled Brooklyn en masse for the country or for the beach, the St. Giles children had to endure stifling conditions of their stuffy quarters and tar-baked play yards. As a result, the children circulated and signed a petition that was presented to the trustees, asking for a summer home in the country where they could escape the city heat. The trustees quickly raised the requisite funds to purchase a home and began looking for a suitable location. The old Queens County Courthouse in Garden City Park was briefly considered, but having been built in 1786 and not used since 1872, the building was beyond repair. Ironically, the courthouse burned down soon after St. Giles rejected the site for their summer home.

In January 1903, a four acre site was chosen in West Hempstead at the north end of Mayfair Ave. and the Taylor estate, bordering Garden City. An airy country house already existed on the property and the Brooklyn Eagle declared that "a prettier spot for a summer home could not have been selected". Transfer of title took place on May 1 of that year and the building was dedicated on Saturday, May 30 with a tall, 18 ft. 'wayside cross' erected on the front lawn (the scene pictured below taken from the Brooklyn Eagle).

The hospital brought in cows and chickens and planted a garden, affording the young residents an enriched country experience during their stay at the Long Island facility. The campus eventually added a separate boys' dormitory, a schoolhouse and a surgical pavilion (seen below).

Eventually, St. Giles' 'summer annex' was utilized year round. During the 20s through the 50s, St. Giles played a major role in treating children suffering from polio. During that time, they claim to have ran the second largest outpatient clinic among all of the children’s orthopaedic hospitals in America.

By 1960, a polio vaccine had been discovered leading to a dramatic drop in the number of cases involving polio. By 1973, St. Giles sold off the West Hempstead property and soon after, in 1978, the Brooklyn Hospital closed for good. The organization still continues, however, as a charitable foundation with an endowment of over $26 million.

As for the West Hempstead property, the land was subdivided and developed as a quaint little cul-de-sac called Berryhill Court. Despite the hospital's relatively recent demise, there no longer seems to be any remnant of its existence. (The 'now' photo below taken from Google Maps approximate to the location of the St Giles , albeit further back from the street).

Francis B. Taylor and the Mayfair Section

In the previous post, we mentioned the name of West Hempsteader Francis B. Taylor, who was hired as an attorney by the People's Protective Association of Nassau County to try an stop the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup from taking place. Taylor actually had a personal interest in stopping the race - his home was located right on the course. He lived on Hempstead Turnpike at the corner of Mayfair Ave. Here is some more information about him, from what I've been able to gather.

Francis Bergh Taylor was born in 1864 in NJ and soon after moved to NY. He was a great-grandson a Revolutionary War soldier from South Carolina named Joseph Moringault and was an active member of the Sons of the Revolution. In 1889, he purchased a tract of land on the north side of Hempstead Turnpike from John T. Hanna, a stock broker who owned a large country estate where the Mayfair section is now located. In the 1906 Belcher-Hyde map below, you will notice J T Hanna's estate just west of Mayfair Ave and Francis Taylor's property just to the east of Mayfair.

In 1890, he received his law degree from NYU Law School (in the third graduating class of the school) and opened up a practice in Hempstead, becoming a prominent local attorney. Possibly owing to his southern roots, Taylor was a staunch democrat in politics, even as a young 20 year old when he worked for the Grover Cleveland 1884 election campaign and helped get the first democratic president in 28 years to the White House. In 1893 he was elected as Justice of the Peace for the Village of Hempstead and in 1897 served as the only democratic member of the Town board. When he left the board in 1898, the Republican who took his seat ensured that the TOH would be governed by one party rule for some time thereafter. Alas, Taylor's party affiliation ensured that his political career never got very far, since Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead had always been republican strongholds. He ran and lost for County Comptroller in 1919, and ran unsuccessfully for State Assembly in 1922 and 1923. In the 1922 defeat which he lost by only 35 votes, he filed a lawsuit claiming ballot irregularities and successfully petitioned a judge for a recount and re-examination of the voting machines. (He evidently lost anyway).

One of the more interesting cases which F B Taylor litigated was one brought in 1905 by a taxpayer of School District 17, involving (among other things) the issue of separation of church and state. Before SD17's John Street School was built in the 1930s, the district schoolhouse was located at the south corner of Nassau Blvd. and Dogwood Ave. The school board had voted to expend $200 in erecting a horse shed on school grounds, the alleged purpose of which was to accommodate people who would attend a religious school that leased the building on Sundays. Taylor successfully brought suit on behalf of his client to prevent the board from what was ruled inappropriate public expenditure.

Francis B Taylor died in 1940 in West Hempstead and his body was taken to South Carolina to be buried together with his ancestors.