How West Hempstead almost Became the Seat of Nassau County

The following article originally appeared, with minor modifications, in the West Hempstead Patch in 2011.  Presented here with permission of the author.

From the 1906 E. Belcher-Hyde map of West Hempstead.  Area in red shows the proposed Nassau County seat, rejected in a county-wide referendum in November 1898. 

With the recent redevelopment of the old Courtesy Hotel property into luxury apartments, and some promising future plans for the surrounding area, we'd like to take the opportunity to dig into the history of a neighborhood that has had its share of ups and downs over the years.   Not many people are aware that, just over a century ago, a decision was made that would forever alter the landscape of West Hempstead's eastern corridor.

We begin the story in 1898, when the western half of Queens County was consolidated into greater New York City and the New York State Legislature approved the creation of Nassau County for all the remaining territory in the eastern portion of Queens. One of the first orders of business for the new county was to find a suitable location for its seat of government. In January, a committee tasked with making preparations for the new county passed a resolution laying out some requirements among which was that the new seat must be located within one mile of a train station. Once the proposed locations were advanced, the issue would be settled by a county-wide referendum in November of that year.

That spring, the county was presented with a terrific offer of property for its headquarters. On May 24, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that the estate of Austin Corbin, late president of the LIRR, owned “several hundred acres lying west of the West Hempstead station,” and was set to donate eight acres of land “located on Hempstead Avenue, within four hundred feet of the West Hempstead station.” (Back then, the West Hempstead train station was located just north of its current site, across Hempstead Avenue. As a frame of reference, the Corbin Estate's land grant "within four hundred feet" of the station would place the site at the property bounded by the LIRR right-of-way to the east and Westminster Rd to the west, and Hempstead Tpke and Hempstead Ave to the north and south, where National Wholesale Liquidators is currently located).  

(Left) Early photo of property west of the WH LIRR station, after the LI Traction Co built a trestle in 1904 over the LIRR right-of-way. (Right) Contemporary photo of property.

Residents of Hempstead, the region’s largest village, as well as those living to the south and west, received the idea with much enthusiasm.  

The proposal’s main obstacle, however, was the opposition of the powerful and wealthy residents of the North Shore and the eastern region, who were unsatisfied with the location at Hempstead. In response, two additional locations were proposed, one at Mineola and a second at Hicksville. The Mineola faction secured a four acre land grant from the Garden City Company on an unused parcel of the Hempstead Plains at Franklin Avenue within “a three minutes’ walk of the railroad station;" and then as if to highlight one of the perceived deficiencies of the Hempstead proposal, they added that it was "distant enough to prevent annoyance from passing trains”.

Knowing that their plan stood little chance for success, the Hicksville committee arranged a meeting in June wherein an invited representative of Mineola argued that “in a three cornered fight Hempstead would be sure to win, but with the assistance of Hicksville, Mineola would be selected as the county seat and that would be more convenient for the people of Hicksville.” The argument must have resonated, for by October, Hicksville officially withdrew its plan and threw its support to Mineola.  

In the end, it wasn’t close. In resounding numbers, voters cast their ballots for Mineola and rejected the West Hempstead site. However, not all the blame lied solely with the committeemen in Mineola and Hicksville who struck that crucial deal that helped seal their victory.  In a post-election analysis by the Brooklyn Eagle, the following revealing perspective was offered as to why such a peculiarly large percentage of Hempstead voters even soured to their own plan:  “People…who live in the place, because of its attractions (sic) as a residential locality, allege that they voted against bringing the county buildings to Hempstead, as they did not desire to bring a large crowd of criminals, jurors and witnesses to the place.…It would increase the business of the bar rooms and hotels, but would injure the village as a place of residence for…people who located here because of its respectability and quietness.”

 The loss of the county seat wasn't the only setback from which that section of West Hempstead would suffer. Two years later, the newly established Nassau Hospital, the county's first full service medical facility located until then, just east of the West Hempstead train station at the corner of Front and Fulton Streets, would relocate to Mineola.  The hospital was the forerunner to Winthrop University Hospital and together, with the new county courthouse, they would serve as a major boon to that area's economy. Buoyed by the establishment of numerous law practices and medical offices, Mineola would solidify its position as a regional center for both the medical and legal fields. In contrast, over the next 100 years, the void left in West Hempstead's business district would engender such colorful uses of property as a grazing area for horses of the Long Island Express Co, a golf driving range, an annual visit by a travelling amusement company, a series of discount big-box retailers, a car wash, and later, across Hempstead Ave., a modest four story hotel called the Hempstead Motor Inn.  The Motor Inn later became the Courtesy Hotel and, over time, devolved into a magnet for crime and a thorn in the side of area residents.

How differently might our neighborhood developed had voters chosen West Hempstead as the county seat, or had Nassau Hospital had remained in its original location? Such speculation is a fruitless exercise in counter-factual history and won't do anything to accelerate efforts to improve the area's current condition; but hey, it's still fun to think about.  

S Klein Then & Now - Follow Up to Previous Post

The sketching below comes from an ad that ran on page nine of the Saturday, August 13th, 1955 edition of Newsday, heralding the grand opening of the S Klein Dept. Store in West Hempstead that Monday.

The building's initial design took full advantage of the property's wide frontage along Hempstead Turnpike with large showcase windows along the full length of its' north facade. You will also notice that the store originally had an entrance from Hempstead Turnpike. Overall, though the building typified the "big box store" model that became so prevalent throught American suburbia, it evidently had somewhat greater aesthetic appeal than what it eventually devolved into over the years. And while it didn't exactly compare to other upscale department stores, shoppers who entered the main floor were greeted with high, waffled ceilings and broad columns.

Comparing the "then" shot to the "now" shot below, taken roughly from the same angle, aside from the showcase windows being boarded up, the one striking difference is the addition of a third floor, which wasn't built until 1961, effectively adding another 75,000 sq. ft. to the building.

Looking closely, one notices a different color shading of the bricks used for the third floor. When Liquidators occupied the building, the 3rd floor was used for the offices of their national headquarters.


From S Klein (1955-74) to E J Korvette (1974-80) to Shopper's Village (1980-95) to National Wholesale Liquidators (1995-2009 to Shopper's Village #2 (2009), this property has gone through alot of tennants.

A Brief History of the Shopper's Village Property

The following article originally appeared in the Fall 2008 edition of the West Hempstead Civic Association newsletter. The article has been updated with minor modifications.


The recent “liquidation” of the National Wholesale Liquidators flagship store in West Hempstead and subsequent reopening (and reclosing) of Shopper’s Village gives us an opportunity to reflect on the history of a property that for over 50 years has housed our neighborhood’s largest retail establishment in one form or another.

We pick up the story in 1891, before which time the entire area was but a wooded and grassy meadow. The property was originally part of a 19 acre estate built by War of 1812 veteran Adrian V. Cortelyou, and later sold to Henry M. Onderdonk, editor of the Hempstead Inquirer. That September, LIRR president Austin Corbin started buying up hundreds of acres in West Hempstead, including the triangular property bounded by Hempstead Tpke., Westminster Blvd. and Hempstead Ave., instantly making him the neighborhood’s largest individual land owner¹. More than just purchasing land for a new rail line that would run from Valley Stream to Mineola (the remnant of which comprises the existing WH branch of the LIRR), Corbin envisioned developing a planned community to rival the style of Garden City². Corbin died unexpectedly in 1896 and his grand plan never materialized to the scale of his aspirations, leaving many large, vacant plots of land.

The tract remained undeveloped and in the hands of the LIRR, which for a time used the property as a grazing area for the horses of the Long Island Express Company (see this post). Then in May 1941, a man named John “Ole” Olsen came on to the scene. Olsen and his partner Chic Johnson had struggled in the small-time Vaudeville circuit for 25 years until the debut of their hugely popular smash hit Broadway musical, Hellzapoppin. By the time it ended its almost four-year run in 1941, Hellzapoppin became Broadway’s longest running musical and third longest running play of any kind³. Olsen, a resident of Malverne, became a big celebrity and made a killing on his show, and now was confronted with two primary problems - finding a good investment for his new fortune and finding a good local shopping venue where his wife could spend it. His solution was to head up a syndicate to purchase twelve acres of land in West Hempstead and develop a business and shopping center on it. His ambitious plan called for a building to accommodate a department store such as Sears or Montgomery Ward, a 1,500 seat theater, a sports center with bowling alleys and an ice skating rink, a “Howard Johnson” type restaurant and other retail shops⁴.

Disappointed West Hempsteaders who never got to see this development materialize can blame Emperor Hirohito for putting a hold on plans because in December of that year, a little incident at Pearl Harbor drew the US into WWII, effectively putting a stop to any major capital projects that didn’t have to do with the war effort. By the end of the decade Olsen’s project lost steam, though he did accomplish some minimal development not the least of which included a car wash he aptly named ‘Carzapoppin’⁵. During this time, a professional PGA golfer named Art Stuhler also set up a driving range on the site to the delight of St. Thomas school children who would scavenge for golf balls along the fence on their way to and from school. In July 1952, Olsen sold most of his land to Samuel Leider, a developer who had just completed the Centre Island Shopping Center in the brand new settlement of Levittown. Leider planned on bringing in S. Klein on the Square as the anchor tenant of a new 200,000+ sq. ft. building⁶. ‘Klein’s’ was a full-line discount retailer on Manhattan’s Union Square that started in 1906 and focused on selling bargain merchandise. Financial problems and disputes between shareholders delayed the project’s construction⁷ until it was finally completed in 1955. While the building was not exactly a marvel of architecture, it did provide modern conveniences like elevators and escalators and, oh yes, plenty of parking. To understand the phenomenon of the property’s massive underused parking lot is to appreciate the whale sized vehicles driven by our mothers and grandmothers in the ‘50s, the Long Island housewife’s disaffection for parallel parking those vehicles (especially the ones with the fins), and the lack of requisite parking at existing local dept. stores like Arnold Constable in Hempstead.

For West Hemspteaders old enough to wax nostalgic about those days, it didn’t get much better than the summer of ’55 and the heyday of the baby boomer generation. Scores of new homes, schools, churches, and synagogues were transforming the neighborhood, the Brooklyn Dodgers & NY Yankees were headed to the World Series, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ by Bill Haley & His Comets was playing on the radio, and West Hempstead was getting its very own department store.

For Klein’s management, however, anticipation of the August 15th grand opening was probably cause for more anxiety than excitement, after the launch of their first branch store in Newark five years earlier had caused a potentially dangerous human stampede. Terrific hype leading up to that opening (the front section of the previous day’s Newark Star-Ledger contained 14 full page broadsides announcing deeply discounted goods) had backfired when over 150,000 bargain hunters showed up. The mob forced managers to close the doors every 10 minutes to allow the disbursement of shoppers while police were called in for crowd control. Learning from that mistake, Klein’s heralded the WH opening with an understated single page ad in Newsday⁸. The plan worked, for although the 1,500 car parking lot was quickly filled (for the first and probably only time), the crowd was civil and orderly while shoppers sifted through racks of $1.39 skirts and 39¢ hosiery⁹.

By 1974, major operating losses forced Klein’s to sell off the WH store to another discount retailer called EJ Korvette. Korvette’s didn’t last very long, however. Mismanagement and a slowing economy forced it into bankruptcy and by 1980 the WH store was closed. After that was the brief tenure of Woolco (Woolworth’s experiment in the discount box chain market), followed by an indoor flea market called Shopper’s Village. Many locals still fondly remember the old Shopper’s Village for its grab-bag bargains and colorful vendors known by the particular merchandise they plied such as “the Pickle Man” and “the Dollhouse Lady”. The flea market operated for over a decade until it closed in 1995, done in to some extent by the soaring utility rates of the ‘90s.

The closing of Shopper’s Village created an expansion opportunity for National Wholesale Liquidators, an up and coming, locally based discount retailer that offered a wide variety of closeout items. For over the past decade, the building housed not only its flagship store, but also its national headquarters.

Alas, the wheel of history continues to turn, as National Wholesale Liquidators filed for Chapter 11 last year, giving a chance for a second go-around for Shopper's Village . Unfortunately, though, once again the viability of Shopper’s Village was short lived, leaving us awaiting to find out what’s “in store” for property that for decades has been an integral part of West Hempstead’s business landscape.

[1] “Buying Farms” Brooklyn Eagle 19 Sept, 1891 2
[2] See “Improvements at Hempstead” Brooklyn Eagle 30 May, 1894 12.
[3] Stanley Green, Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre (Da Capo Press, 1980) 184
[4] “Business Center Planned in Nassau” NYT 11 May 1941 RE1
[5] “Farm in Baldwin Sold for Housing” NYT 17 Apr 1954 21
[6] “Stores Planned on Site Bought From Ole Olsen” NYT 25 Jul 1952 32
[7] “Shopping Center Halted by Dispute” NYT 26 Nov 1953 55
[8] The ad was placed on page 9 of the Saturday edition of Newsday
[9] “Klein Causes Jam at ‘Quiet Opening’” NYT 16 Aug 1955 34