1875 Woodfield Train Disaster

The following article first appeared in the Fall 2012 edition of the WH Community Support Association newsletter.

Wreckage of the South Side Railroad disaster at Woodfield, purportedly the oldest surviving image of a train wreck on LI.  The Wreck occurred on the David Bedell farm, currently the site of the former Stop & Shop on Woodfield Rd. From the WH Historical Society archives.

Here’s a pop question: name the worst ever human disaster in the history of West Hempstead?  One would have to go all the way back over 137 years for the answer -  the South Side Railroad train wreck at Woodfield on February 3, 1875. (Update: Ironically at the same time this article went to print, West Hempstead learned about an awful car crash on the Southern State Parkway that killed four teenagers, matching the human life toll suffered in the Woodfield train disaster).   The following is a brief recap of that calamitous incident and the events that lead up to it.  But in order to understand what happened, some background information is necessary involving two important geographical features of West Hempstead that have long since disappeared – the headwaters of Schodack Brook and the path of the Hempstead-Valley Stream branch of the Southern Railroad.

Schodack Brook and the David Bedell Farm

Schodack Brook is a small rivulet which runs southward through Lakeview and empties into Schodack Pond in Hempstead Lakes State Park.  The brook can still be viewed today running though the residential section of Lakeview, just east of Woodfield Rd., but years ago it extended further north through what is now the site of the former Stop & Shop property.  In the late 1800’s that property was part of a large farm owned by David Bedell, who moved there with his wife Ruth (Rhodes) Bedell shortly after their marriage in 1843.  (That marriage brought together two of the more prominent families of West Hempstead whose roots in the local community date back to the very founding of Hempstead Village. David was a son of Hiram K. Bedell who had lived on a farm on the north side of Hempstead Turnpike.  Ruth was the daughter of William Rhodes whose large homestead sprawled along the east side of Woodfield Road and occupied much of the land that would become known as Hempstead Gardens.  The sole remaining visible legacy of the Rhodes estate is what is purported to be the oldest standing house in West Hempstead in its original location, the modest home at 419 Woodfield Rd, circa 1839).

The above map, circa 1873, shows the route of the South Side RR's Hempstead line through Woodfield at the bottom, with David & Ruth (Rhodes) Bedell's home just north of the tracks.  Further north along Woodfield Rd. are the homes of three of Ruth Bedell's Brothers, William L., Jacob and Isaac Rhodes.

Southern Railroad

In the mid-nineteenth century, Hempstead Village was displeased with being bypassed by the Long Island Railroad’s main line which ran three miles to the north, despite being one of the largest villages in western Long Island. Though since 1839 Hempstead was provided a shuttle train that connected to the LIRR’s main line at a depot called Hempstead Branch (later Mineola), villagers were looking for a more direct and reliable connection to points west.  By 1868, they found their answer in the South Side Railroad, a competing line to the LIRR that targeted the growing but underserved communities of Long Island’s South shore.  The South Side RR laid a single-track route from Valley Stream to Hempstead which was completed in 1870 and service began in September of that year.  (The branch should not be confused with the path of the existing WH branch of the LIRR built some 23 years later).  The route spurred off at Valley Stream and ran northeast, paralleling Cornwell Ave. until it crossed at Franklin Ave. in present-day Malverne where a station called Bridgeport was located.  Thereafter, it headed on a virtual straight path to Norwood station, located just south of Hall’s Pond (site of the St. Thomas Chapel parking lot).  Proceeding northeastward, the track passed Woodfield Depot at the intersection of Woodfield Rd. and Oakford St., and then over an embankment and culvert at Schodak Brook (at the present site of the old Stop & Shop).  The line then turned slightly northward where it ran through the woods and finally terminated in Hempstead Village.  No trace of this old line exists any longer, with the possible exception of a small access road that runs behind the WH Water District’s Birch St. Plant.

On January 31^st, 1875, the area experienced unusually strong rains that swelled the ponds and brooks of Long Island. At Woodfield Depot, the water backed up behind the culvert, and flooded David Bedell farm.  Bedell’s house was located just 70 yards north of the railroad bridge over the brook, and when the water level came within inches of the top step of his porch, he directed his family to roll up the rugs on the main floor so they wouldn’t get ruined.  On the evening of February 3, the managers of the South Side RR instructed an eight man crew to run a single engine and passenger car to Hempstead to verify the safety of the road and make any necessary repairs.  The crew proceeded slowly over Schodack Brook without incident and reached the terminal in Hempstead.  At around 8 PM, on the return train, the weight of the engine undermined the bridge, sending it backwards into the flooded creek and causing an enormous explosion that could be clearly heard as far away as Garden City.  The engineer, James Scott of Hempstead, was killed instantly.  Benjamin Carman, the brakeman and Eli Thorpe, trackmaster, were also killed.  Bernard Callahan, the fireman, survived the blast but was pinned down by the debris and drowned to death in the water.  Three of the four others on the train were severely injured.  The dead bodies were brought to David Bedell’s barn where the Hempstead coroner examined their cause of death.  A photo of the incident remains as the oldest surviving image of a train wreck on Long Island.

In the following months, an investigation of the incident revealed that the South Side Railroad was responsible for the shoddy construction of the Hempstead Branch and they were ordered to make repairs and pay for damages.  A couple of other fatal incidents sealed the fate of the South Side.  On April 30, 1879, less than ten years from when the line was opened, the last train rode the Hempstead - Valley Stream branch.  The South Side went bankrupt and its assets were sold at auction.  Locals had always hoped that another concern would purchase the Hempstead line and reopen it.  Instead, the buyer tuned out to be Henry Hilton, manager of the Garden City Company, who had no intention of reopening the line.  In all likelihood, his purchase was an attempt to protect his Garden City line from nearby competition.  West Hempstead would have to wait 1893 before it regained rail service, when the LIRR built the existing branch.

David Bedell continued to live at Woodfield until 1896 when he sold his farm to Edwin C. Duryea.  The Bedells lived to celebrate their 63rd wedding anniversary in 1906.  That year, Ruth passed away at age 90 and David was called to Heaven a few weeks later on July 4th, at age 93.

David and Ruth (Rhodes) Bedell at their 60th wedding anniversary- owners of the farm where the 1875 Woodfield train wreck occurred.

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.

Martin V. Wood – West Hempstead’s Most Accomplished Local Politician

The following article appeared in the Winter 2010 edition of the WH Community Support Association newsletter (I have since added minor modifications).

In West Hempstead in 1881, there lived a tall, demure, middle-aged farmer named Martin V. Wood, who resided on a modest farm with his wife and two daughters, directly across from where Hall’s Pond Park is currently located. Born on January 23, 1838, Martin grew up on a homestead located a stone’s throw from where he eventually settled, and spent his boyhood years helping his father, Valentine Wood, with farm work and at his general store, and attending local schools¹. Martin likely spent some years of his schooling at the old ’Trimming Square’ School (at the corner of Dogwood Ave & Nassau Blvd) where a young Walt Whitman once held a job as schoolmaster². Shortly after getting married in 1861, Martin purchased a farm adjacent to his father’s and for the next twenty years quietly busied his time in agricultural pursuits and raising his family³.

All that would quickly change in July, 1881. Martin had an uncle named William L. Wood, a grocer from New York City, who died childless in July of that year. Aside from his day job, William was also a Tammany politician who held various public offices including assistant alderman, police justice and member of the NYC Board of Education, and had amassed a small fortune from his business dealings. (William L. Wood was also a principle investor in the New York & Hempstead railroad, West Hempstead’s first rail line, which began service in 1870. The engine that served that line was named the ‘WL Wood’. The local train depot, at the north end of Valentine Wood’s property, currently where the St. Thomas parking lot is located, was given the name “Norwood”. With this investment, Wood was probably serving the dual purpose of helping provide rail service near the homes of his brother and nephew and perhaps also creating a faster and cheaper way to transport produce from Long Island to his grocery business in NYC.) His estate was valued at $175,000, a small part of which he bequeathed to the children of his nephew, Col. Alfred M. Wood, a Civil War hero who was wounded and captured at the First Battle of Manassas and at one time was Mayor of Brooklyn. Martin V. Wood was shocked to learn, however, that the bulk of his uncle’s estate, $150,000 ($3.3 million in today‘s dollars), was willed to him. It was reported at the probate hearing that the deceased selected Martin as the primary beneficiary because “he was a staid, straightforward, honorable man who would not be disturbed by possession of wealth but use it as a sensible man”.⁴

With his new change of fortune, Wood tried his hand in local politics and ran for Town of Hempstead supervisor in 1882 as a Republican, a position which he won. The widely popular Wood then went on to serve a record eight consecutive terms as Town Supervisor (back then, terms lasted one year). He was finally narrowly defeated in 1890 by 43 votes, only because he even lost support of many admiring republicans who felt that, “they are opposed to any one man having a life mortgage on the highest office in town, no matter what his peculiar fitness may be⁵”. However in 1894, he again won the Town supervisorship and served another two terms in that position. During this span, the Town of Hempstead underwent a period of expansive growth, going from a population of a little over 18,000 in 1880 to over 27,000 just twenty years later⁶. (The latter figure would have comparably been higher, but no longer included the entire Rockaway peninsula, once part of the Town of Hempstead but later annexed by greater New York City in 1899. As an aside, the greater NYC annexation plan originally included all of Inwood and most of the Village of Lawrence, but angry residents of Inwood & Lawrence successfully fought off the attempt to be swallowed up by NYC. In April 1899, Governor Theodore Roosevelt signed the Doughty Bill, named after the bill's sponsor, Assembyman G. Wilbur Doughty, redrawing the Queens-Nassau border further west. [Doughty Blvd. in Inwood, along the new border, is a living testament to that effort. G. Wilbur Doughty went on become TOH Supervisor and then Nassau Co. Supervisor and helped establish a virtual Republican dynasty in Hempstead & Nassau that lasts to this day, largely from the benefit of the perception that the GOP was the best party to protect LI from the encroachment of the liberal political policies of New York City. His nephew, J. Russell Sprague created the position of Nassau County Executive and served in that capacity from 1938 to 1953]. A year into the annexation plan, many residents of the Rockaways were dissatisfied by the diminished level of services and representation once they became part of New York City. This compelled Doughty to advance another bill in the NYS Legislature in 1900 that would establish a new township and join Nassau County. Had the bill passed, a new jurisdiction would have been formed as the "Town of West Hempstead". That bill never came to the floor, however, because the Nassau County supervisors came out against the plan⁷). Martin V. Wood presided over Town government during this period of change, when numerous roads were macadamized, gas and lighting districts were formed, and new school districts were established.

One of the more interesting issues during Wood's tenure involved the establishment of School District 25 in Garden City in 1886. When the Town of Hempstead sold a large swath of the Hempstead Plains in 1870 to A.T. Stewart to create Garden City, Town citizens agreed to sell their common lands with the provision that the monies obtained from the sale should be placed into a trust fund and that two-thirds of the accruing interest from that fund should be devoted to support the public schools of the Town. However, the manner of distribution of those funds was left to the discretion of the board of town auditors. When SD 25 broke off from SD 1 (Hempstead) in 1886, it was discovered that the Garden City School District was not receiving their fair share of disbursements from this fund. At issue was whether the Laws of 1870 included newly established school districts or only the ones that existed at the time the law was written. SD 25 then sued the Town of Hempstead and the NY State Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiff, forcing the Town of Hempstead to compensate Garden City for missed payments⁸.

Martin V. Wood was also the founder and president of purportedly the oldest bank in Nassau County, the Hempstead Bank, est. 1887. Hempstead Bank was for years one of Nassau's premier financial institutions. (In fact, the name Hempstead Bank survived as late as 1983, until a series of mergers and acquisitions brought it to an end. Hempstead Bank became Northstar Bank in the ‘80s, and then Fleet Bank in the ‘90s, and was ultimately swallowed up by Bank of America in 2005⁹). For a time Wood was also president and director of the Hempstead and Nassau Gas Companies¹⁰.

Unfortunately, Wood was predeceased by his wife Harriett¹¹, and a daughter, Jeanette¹². He was survived by a younger daughter, Wilhelmina, who never married. Jeanette married William S. Hall, a prominent citizen who was a trustee of the Freeport Bank and at one time County treasurer. When Martin V. Wood died on Feb. 22, 1911, he bequeathed almost his entire half million dollar estate to his grandson, Martin V. W. Hall¹³.


Martin V. Wood standing
in front of the Hempstead
Bank

Upon his grandfather’s death, Hall became president of the Hempstead Bank and ably guided its continued progress for the next 30 years¹⁴. Hall inherited Wood’s beloved farm in West Hempstead and occupied the magnificent twenty room colonial home that Wood had built on the property. Hall died in 1944 and his widow, Elizabeth, continued to live in a cottage on the property at least until the mid 1950s, around the time Nassau County began to acquire land across Nassau Blvd to create a new park¹⁵. Thereafter, Hall’s Pond Park, as it came to be known, became a tribute to the local legacy of the Wood and Hall families.

(Next year marks the 50th anniversary of Hall’s Pond Park as a County Park¹⁶).

1 See Portrait and Biographical Record of Queens County (Long Island) (New York: 1896, Chapman Publishing Company) Valentine Wood owned a farm just south of Hall’s Pond. Martin V. Wood’s farm was located due east, across the street, from Hall’s Pond. See Atlas of Queens Co., Long Island New York (New York: 1891, Chester Wolverton) Plate 031.

2 For an overview of this school and the Walt Whitman connection, see the essay by Thomas F. Heffernan, Walt Whitman Here in Trimming Square (Garden City: Adelphi University Office of Publications) here - http://libraries.adelphi.edu/bar/Whitman/heffernan_essay.pdf.

3 Portrait and Biographical Record of Queens County (Long Island) (New York: 1896, Chapman Publishing Company).

4 “A Poor Man’s Sudden Rise to Wealth” Brooklyn Eagle 29 Jul 1881 4.

5 “On the Far Rockaway Branch” Brooklyn Eagle 31 Mar 1889 11.

6 Compare 10th Census of the United States Vol 1 (Washington, DC: 1883, Government Printing Office) 269, and 12th Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1900, Part 1 (Washington, DC: 1901, US Census Office) 280.

7 “Fifth Ward Bill Dropped” Brooklyn Eagle 6 Feb 1900 1.

8 State of New York, Dept. of Public Instruction, 35th Annual Report of the State Superintendant (Albany: 1889, The Troy Press Co.) 148-152.

9 See http://www.scripophily.com/nybankhistoryh.htm.

10 “Nassau County Gas Company” Brooklyn Eagle 30 Jan 1903 10.

11 “Mrs. Wood Left Large Estate” Brooklyn Eagle 22 Jan 1910 1.

12 “Mrs. William S. Hall” Brooklyn Eagle 15 August 1908 2.

13 “Martin V. Wood’s Will Filed” Brooklyn Eagle 13 Mar 1911 5.

14 “Martin V. W. Hall” NYT 25 Mar 1946 19. Leadership of the Hempstead Bank remained in the family as Martin V. W. Hall’s son, Bruce, assumed the presidency into the 1980s. Bruce died in 1995.

15 See “Malverne Landmark Burns” NYT 4 Apr 1954 56. According to the Nassau County parks website http://www.nassaucountyny.gov/agencies/Parks/Wheretogo/passive.html, the County purchased Hall’s Pond Park in three parcel between 1956 and 1970. The large home that Martin V. Wood built on his estate at the southern approach to West Hempstead (where the Exxon gas station is now located) eventually fell into disrepair and was ultimately burned by vandals in 1954.

16 A placard at the southern end of Halls Pond commemorates the official opening of the County Park in 1961.

Henry Hilton and His West Hempstead Connection - a Matter of Poetic Justice

When Garden City founder A. T. Stewart died childless in 1876, he left his enormous estate (estimated to be the third largest in the US behind the Astors' and Vanderbilts') in control of his private counsel, Henry Hilton. Hilton (after whom Hilton Ave. in Garden City is named) carries three big stains on his legacy.

First, he was one of the most notorious anti-Semites in 19th century America. Stewart left one of the most opulent hotels of its day, the Grand Union in Saratoga Springs, in the hands of Hilton, and when Jewish financier Joseph Seligman took his family up there in 1877 for a vacation, Hilton caused a national sensation when he infamously denied them entry. Hilton's hatred of Jews was rivaled by future LIRR President Austin Corbin, who followed Hilton's lead by barring Jews from his magnificent Manhattan Hotel in Coney Island. Together with Corbin, Hilton formed the Society for the Suppression of Jews where, at the inaugural meeting, it was proclaimed, "If this is a free country, why can't we be free of Jews?".

Second, Hilton had a purported close association with the corrupt Tweed ring, which was likely the cause that prevented Stewart from being approved as Treasury Secretary after the latter's nomination to that post by President U. S. Grant.

And the third blemish of Hilton's lasting legacy was his squandering of Stewart's almost limitless fortune. (One study estimated Stewart's net worth in today's dollars to be $70 billion, making him the seventh richest American ever when measuring his private wealth as a percentage of the economy). In the 1870s, A. T. Stewart & Co., the nation's largest dry goods business and first mega department store, was left to Hilton's management. But by the 1890s Hilton ran the business into the ground. A young, up and coming Jewish attorney named Henry Morgenthau (father of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., and grandfather of Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau) was hired as legal advisor to Hilton's brother-in-law and business partner just before the store's assets were sold for pennies on the dollar. Morgenthau later recalled the poetic justice involved with Hilton being driven out of business principally by competition from the Jewish firms B. Altman and Stern's.

Perhaps another modicum of poetic justice is the fact that Hilton is a great candidate for the "separated at birth" files with his twin - Jewish author and NYT columnist Thomas Friedman.



But I digress.

The bottom line from all this is that Hilton was not a very good guy. What is not well known, however, is that Hilton had a conspicuous albeit inadvertent hand in shaping West Hempstead into what it is today. Allow me to explain.

The first railroad to roll through WH was the New York & Hempstead RR, completed in 1870, which ran from Valley Stream to a terminus in Hempstead Village. A station was built just south of Hall's Pond and was named Norwood, and a small settlement sprouted up there. Mismanagement and a couple terrible accidents eventually forced the South Side Railroad (which by then bought out the NY & Hempstead) into bankruptcy in 1880. With the rails yet in place, Hempstead residents had always hoped that the line would soon be reopened by a new concern. When the South Side RR's assets went up for auction in 1882, including the right of way leading to Hempstead Village, Henry Hilton emerged as the highest bidder, and it soon became clear that he had no intention to do anything with the line. Hilton's sole interest in purchasing the NY & Hempstead franchise was to ensure that no one would move in to compete against his Garden City rail line for which he had an ongoing lease agreement with the LIRR. He feared that a new buyer would persuade the LIRR to build a station near Hempstead Village that would serve both Hempstead and Garden City, and thus hinder the Stewart Line. Hilton was perfectly content to seeing that future West Hempstead remained as rural and undeveloped as possible so as not to disturb the growth of Garden City. For the next dozen years, residents of the south side between Valley Stream and Hempstead were left without rail service until 1893 when LIRR president Austin Corbin completed the line that currently exists, with the help of the new manager of the Garden City Co. (and later its first village president) George L. Hubbell. By that time, Hilton was out of the picture while Corbin envisioned developing West Hempstead and Hempstead Gardens into a village in the style of Garden City.

How differently would have West Hempstead evolved had someone besides Hilton purchased that road and had actually kept it operational? Well, for one thing, the current LIRR line would not have been built if the original line was left in service. The neighborhood then would probably not have been called "West Hempstead" since that name was acquired from Corbin's new LIRR station. More likely, the name Norwood would have had a better chance of sticking. (Norwood eventually faded from the landscape, probably because of the confusion caused by the existence of a town in upstate NY of the same name. But had Long Island's Norwood been given a chance to grow, it might have prevailed in keeping its name in spite of the upstate Norwood). Also, the natural growth of the neighborhood's commercial district would probably have centered around and spread out from the area just south of Halls Pond, rather than from the area west of Hempstead Village, southward. So does that mean we can blame Hilton for the existence of the Courtesy Hotel? Okay, that's a bit of a stretch. Truthfully, any such exercise in historic second-guessing leads to dangerously speculative territory....But what the heck? It's still fun to think about.

Perhaps one last measure of poetic justice remains to be pointed out. West Hempstead - the neighborhood that Hilton once endeavored to leave as undeveloped as possible and later which Austin Corbin wanted to establish as a grand development has now become home to one of Long Island's most sizable Jewish populations.