Henry M Onderdonk - Editor of the Hempstead Inquirer

The postcard above entitled "Looking out Fulton Ave., Hempstead, NY" is a remarkably vivid view c. 1904 looking west at the former Onderdonk estate located at the western corner of Fulton Avenue and Front Street, a property that was featured in an earlier post. (I have reposted the now shot to give a perspective of the present day location of this magnificent estate). Though almost completely obscured by an impressive collection of trees, one can make out the stately home that once occupied the premises. As previously mentioned, Henry M. Onderdonk moved in to the property in 1870 and lived there until his death in 1885. His second wife Catherine continued to own the property (though it appears that thereafter her primary residence was on Washington St in Hempstead Village) until her death in 1898. For the next two years at the close of the 19th Century the house was leased as the annex to the newly established Nassau Hospital, so the view above shows the property shortly after that period. At the time the estate was at the very outskirts of the village and in fact, most of the property lied outside the village limits.

As editor and publisher of the Hempstead Inquirer, Long Island's leading newspaper in the 19th century, Onderdonk was one of the most prominent citizens in Hempstead. He had quite an eventful and interesting life that put him at the center of some key moments in US history. Here is a brief synopsis:

Henry Moscrop Onderdonk was born on March 26, 1818 in New York, the son of Rev. Benjamin Treadwell Onderdonk who, from 1830 till his death in 1861, was Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. In 1835, at the young age of 17, he was tried and convicted of forging bank notes while he sat in his father's study in Trinity Church. He was sentenced to prison but then was promptly issued clemency by Governor William L. Marcy, which led to public accusations that his favored status as the son of an influential father unfairly led to his pardon. He then went on to become a civil engineer and in 1841 he married Justine Bibby. The 1840s saw him set up shop on John St. as a publisher and bookseller of religious books. (In 1848 he published the first fully-illustrated, book-length edition of Clement C. Moore's poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, a book whose effect in popularizing the modern-day, portly image of a jolly Santa Claus cannot be overstated).

In the mid 1840s, we also find Henry listed as a member of Alexander Cartwright's famed Knickerbocker Base Ball club who would ferry over to Hoboken, NJ to play in the world's very first recorded baseball games at Elysian Fields. I'll bet he and his teammate and brother-in-law, Edward A. Bibby, must have made a fierce double play combination.

In the summer of 1849, ten days after giving birth to their fifth and sixth children, Justine tragically died probably a result of complications from the birth, as did the two infants four days later.

The following year he was remarried to Catherine Donnely and moved his family to Virginia's Kenawha River Valley (before it became part of West Virginia) and put his engineering training to use as a representative of the Virginia Coal & Coke Company. While there he served as postmaster in Len's Creek, VA, in the heart of (West) Virginia's coal mining region. In 1855 he represented the Great Western Mining & Mfg. Co at a mining convention. When the Civil War broke out, he fled across the Ohio River to Gallipolis, OH and opened a bookshop there.

In 1868 he ran for state senate in Ohio's 8th district and narrowly lost to incumbent Homer C. Jones. Onderdonk contested the election by claiming that 100 negro votes were unlawfully counted for his opponent. On the opening day of Ohio's 58th congress in January 1869, the senators voted to unseat Jones in favor of Onderdonk, and in the ensuing debate, state laws were reinforced denying black suffrage. (This would be one of the last times in US history that the lawful denial of a negro's right to vote would factor into an election result. That's because the following month, the federal congress passed the proposed 15th Amendment prohibiting government from denying blacks and former slaves their voting rights, and the proposal was sent to the states for ratification. Two months later, in April, Ohio was one of only three northern states in the Union that outright rejected the 15th Amendment. It wasn't until the following year on January 27, 1870, that Ohio voted to ratify it, and the following week, on February 3rd, the law was amended to the constitution.)

Shortly after completing his term in the Ohio Senate, Onderdonk started yet another chapter in his life by moving back with his six children from his second wife to New York and settling in Hempstead, in the home pictured above. In July of that year, he purchased the Hempstead Inquirer, changed the paper's format and turned it into a world-class publication. (He had some prior editing experience during his old John St. bookshop days when he edited numerous volumes of the NY Ecclesiologist).

His attainment by that time as a man of means is evident by the fact that he became one of three principles in the new New York & Hempstead Railroad (along with William L Wood - see this post and Edward Cooper), the first railroad to lay tracks through Malverne and West Hempstead. (In 1873 he was listed as "treasurer", but his engineering background undoubtedly was also put to good use). He was one of the lay incorporators of the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City and was instrumental in the creation of St. Paul's and St. Mary's schools.

The Onderdonk Homestead in those days, with the six children running around, must have been quite a lively scene. Henry even brought his mother Eliza, the bishop's widow, to live with them. Eliza, a beautiful woman (her portrait shown below, taken in the early 1830s), was born in 1794 and was reported to be in remarkably good health well into her 80s. She survived her son, Henry, by two years, and passed away in 1887 at the age of 93.

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

The Long Island Express Co.

The photo above, showing the NY & Long Island Traction Co.'s trolley upon the trestle that overpassed the LIRR right of way at the West Hempstead station, is an early visual record of the effects of a famous drawn out dispute between the LIRR and the trolley company. The trolley company originally incorporated in 1899 as the Mineola, Hempstead & Freeport Traction Co., and when they laid their line from Queens along Hempstead Tpke into Hempstead village, the original plan was to cross the LIRR's West Hempstead branch rail line at grade. The LIRR at the time backed a rival trolley company called the Nassau Belt Line Traction Co. and so they did whatever they could to thwart the NY & Long Island Traction Co.'s plans. The battle was a lengthy one involving appeals, injunctions, questions of air rights and cut wires. Ultimately, by 1904, a settlement was reached that required the trolley co. to build the bridge in the photo over the LIRR line.

The photo also contains a secondary subject, the horse in the foreground, which at first glance bears no particular significance. Actually, there is a story behind it. In the mid 1800s, the Long Island Express Company was established by the LIRR as a freight and courier service that served destinations along their rail lines. The company employed a series of horse-drawn wagons that were dispatched from LIRR stations to deliver passengers, baggage and parcels to their final destinations. Below is a photo from the Hempstead Public Library collection that shows the dispatch team from Hempstead Village.

At the turn of the 20th century their stable for resting their horses was located in Long Island City, a considerable distance from Hempstead. As mentioned in a previous post, among the 400-500 acres of WH land bought up by the LIRR in 1891 was the 12 acre triangle bordered by Hempstead Tpke, Hempstead Ave and Westminster Rd. That entire parcel originally comprised a quaint estate occupied by Adrian V. Cortelyou, a War of 1812 veteran who moved out to Hempstead from Brooklyn. The estate was later sold to Henry M. Onderdonk, editor of the Hempstead Inquirer.

In 1904, the LIRR deemed the parcel unsuitable for being subdivided into smaller lots, and so they decided to convert the land into a stable for the LI Express horses.

The picture below, looking NW, approximates the location of the photo at the top of the post.

Nassau Hospital Part II - Onderdonk Estate

Below is a sketch from the same Brooklyn Eagle article of the estate of the late Henry M. Onderdonk. Onderdonk was a prominent local citizen who was publisher and editor of the Hempstead Inquirer, and had once served in the Senate when he lived in Ohio. The house was built in the 1840s for Adrian V. Cortelyou, a veteran of the War of 1812. Onderdonk pruchased the home sometime around 1870. He died in 1885 and his widow, Catherine, occupied the house until she, too, died in 1898. When the Nassau Hospital ran out of room at the Bedell House, the recently vacated Onderdonk home across the street (at the western corner of Hempstead Ave and Hempstead Tpke) provided a golden opportunity to handle the overflow of patients.

Though the Onderdonk house itself was at the eastern corner of the property, as per the Chester Wolverton Atlas of 1891, the estate comprised the entire 19 acre triangle bounded by Hempstead Ave, Hempstead Turnpike and Westminster Rd. Soon thereafter, LIRR President Austin Corbin purchased most of the property to lay a new rail line from Valley Stream to Mineola.

Since I didn't know at what angle the sketch was drawn, I had to resort to the Fowler & Bulger birdseye view of Hempstead below from 1876 to recreate the "now" photo.

The birdseye view above shows both the Bedell and Onderdonk houses, with the present-day Hempstead Tpke-Front St. running NW-SE and Hempstead Ave-Fulton St. running SW-NE. The Bedell House is just right of center while the Onderdonk House is at the far left. From the sketch, a porch exists on the near side of the Onderdonk House, while the far side of the house is obscured. The rear of the house has an extension that runs lengthwise, so it can't be that the Brooklyn Eagle sketch was rendered from the rear of the house. It's clear then, that the near porch in the birdseye view is the porch on the left side of the sketch, which was drawn from the street corner facing west - hence the angle provided in the "now" photo. As you can see below, the stately home of Henry M. Onderdonk has been replaced by a different sort of "castle".