A Look into Paul Lindner's Association with the KKK

Below is a follow-up to the previous post, and discusses in more detail the activities of Paul W. F Lindner, a man who was instrumental in the founding of Malverne.

The issue of race relations on Long Island in the 1920s is a complex topic, one which deserves a separate and more extensive study. On its surface, there was undoubtedly a large contingent of White Long Islanders in the '20s who were racists, though historians continue to debate how widespread this racism actually was. What is clear is that the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan was gaining popularity across the Island.

1924 was a volatile year in the history of race relations in America. Eugenics and White Supremacy were widely-held and normative beliefs. The Immigration Act of 1924 severely restricted the number of foreigners who were allowed to immigrate to the US. Here on Long Island that summer, the Ku Klux Klan was riding a wave of momentum that had been building over the previous year or two, and they made their presence felt with their cross-burnings and parades throughout the area. It is estimated that 1 out of every 8 Long Islanders in the 1920s belonged to the KKK. If that statistic seems hard to believe, consider that in 1923 the population of LI at the time hovered just above 200,000, while the KKK comfortably counted 20,000 among their ranks. Add to this their claim that year that they had been recruiting 800 people per week and the 1 in 8 statistic becomes easier to comprehend.

To be sure, the Western Long Island version of the KKK movement of the 1920s did not seem to possess the same kind of firebranded and violent fervor as it did in the deep South. A common refrain of local KKK members in press interviews of that time was, "We are not anti-Black or anti-Jew, but rather pro-America". Nevertheless, if nothing else, the movement did have the effect of scaring the daylights out of Blacks, Jews, Catholics and other minorities. The Klan's recruitment efforts on LI was indeed impressive, and the person most responsible for that recruiting success was none other than Paul W. F. Lindner, Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan (pictured in the photo above, as indicated by the caption).

Locally, KKK activities in Malverne can be traced back to March 1924 and is tied-in to the very beginnings of village government. In 1922 a son of Irish Catholic immigrants and WWI veteran named Geoffrey J. O'Flynn ran against E. J. Christopher for Malverne Village President (back then the office of Mayor was referred to as President). Christopher had been elected in Dec. 1920 as Malverne's first ever president of the village. The 1922 election resulted in the closest vote in the history of the village, with 69 votes for O'Flynn and 69 votes for Christopher. The tie-breaking decision was then sent to the village trustees who chose the challenger over the incumbent, much to the chagrin of his opponents, particularly those who would go on to join the KKK. Two years later, when O'Flynn was soundly defeated by a 30% margin by George McIntosh, KKK members planted two 15-foot tall burning crosses in celebration, one at the Malverne railroad station, and the second at the Paul Lindner farm, a half-mile north on Hempstead Avenue. At Lindner's place they also set off a large explosion of dynamite that blew a hole in the ground "big enough to hold an automobile truck", and in the process, almost killed six of Norwood Hook & Ladder's bravest who rushed to the scene to extinguish the burning cross. When legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell made his off-the-cuff remark during the summer of 1977 that "the Bronx is burning", he seemed to encapsulate the tumultuous convergence of events that transpired in New York City that summer. Perhaps we can similarly refer to the turbulent year of 1924 as a time when "Malverne was burning". For the KKK that year, things were just getting started.

In July, A Jewish druggist named Ernest S. Louis was accused of improperly touching a 13 year-old girl while she was shopping in his Freeport drugstore for perfume. An inquest was made but no charges were filed for lack of evidence. Late on the night of August 15th, the KKK decided to take matters into their own hands by barging into Louis' store and threatening him, giving him ten days to move his family out of Freeport. Louis defied the Klan's order and sure enough, on August 26th, a group of Klansmen kidnapped the druggist. (No doubt, fresh in people's minds was the kidnapping and lynching of Leo Frank by the KKK in Georgia a decade earlier. That incident garnered national attention and spurred the creation of the Anti-Defamation League). The story was a sensation in the press and had many people on edge, wondering about the fate of Louis. The following day Louis turned up in a Mineola hotel, unharmed, but rattled. One of the perpetrators was later identified and arrested, but charges were eventually dropped. As a local Klan leader, Paul Lindner forswore any knowledge of the planning involved in the kidnapping.

One would think that notoriety from that incident might have put a damper on Klan activities. However, if anything, the opposite was true. The following month, on Saturday Sept. 20, Lindner organized in Freeport perhaps the largest Klan parade to ever take place on Long Island. Though Lindner had hoped to see 5,000 march at the event, the New York Times estimated that a total of 2,000 marched in the parade while 30,000 spectators came to watch. Following the parade, a women's KKK rally was held where 8,000 faithful turned up.

Lindner's open leadership in the Klan did not seem to negatively affect his standing in the local community. In 1926 he founded the Malverne Bank and served as its president for the next five years, until he moved to Suffolk County. During his presidency, in 1927, he paid $27,000 for the lot on the corner of Hempstead Ave. and Nottingham Rd. for the future location of the bank, an astonishing amount at that time. He has a street in Malverne named after him and, by extension, an elementary school. But then again, the '20s was a completely different era wherein its historical realities cannot be understood through the lenses of today's sensibilities. Some have argued that given Lindner's nefarious past, serious consideration should be given to changing the name of his namesake school and street. Time will tell whether this will eventually happen.

The Lindner Estate and the Limits of Early Local Firefighting

The subjects of this blog don't usually veer beyond the borders of West Hempstead. In the case of the present subject, however, the magnificent home of Paul W. F. Lindner (shown above) I made an exception because, a) it lied just beyond WH's border, b) Lindner was born and raised in West Hempstead proper and his older brother, Henry, owned a large farm in WH just to the south of the future site of WH middle and high schools. The home was located in a familiar spot along Hempstead Avenue, just SW of the Grossmann Farm, where Grace Lutheran Church of Malverne currently stands.

Paul Lindner's father George, came over from Germany some time in early 1870s and, like so many other local Bavarian pioneers, he purchased a farm on Long Island, located in Washington Square (West Hempstead). Paul was born in 1877, the seventh of eight children. In 1898 he attended Princeton Theological Seminary and entered the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. He then went on to graduate from Princeton University. In the first decade of the 20th century, Lindner purchased a large farm on Hempstead Avenue, in what was then called Norwood, and his farming business brought him a modest degree of success. Soon thereafter he built the grand home pictured above.

He went on to become President of the Norwood school board (district 12) and held that position for over a decade. It was Lindner who sold most of the land purchased by the Amsterdam Development Co. to create what would become the Village of Malverne. Together with Alfred H. Wagg, he was heavily involved in the early development of Malverne and served as president of the Malverne Club. Lindner Place in Malverne is named after him. More information about Lindner will follow in a future post. For now, let's just say he was a pretty important local figure.

On a blustery Tuesday afternoon, January 18th, 1921, a fire started in the Attic of Lindner's home and quickly spread throughout the house. The Norwood Hook & Ladder Co. was called but then quickly needed additional help. They then called on the Lynbrook, Rockville Centre and Hempstead Fire departments for assistance. The trucks rolled in and the massive assemblage of firefighters provided plenty of manpower but was soon confronted with a major problem - water supply. There was none. The wells on the farm were pumped dry and the nearest water supply was almost a half-mile away. The bucket brigade that was formed did little to battle the wind-swept flames. Rockville Centre FD did manage to lay the half-mile long hose but turned it on just it time to watch the home completely engulfed in flames. At least they managed to save the adjacent outhouses and neighboring properties. (Those of us who enjoy turning back the clock by visiting the Grossmann farm probably have those men of the RCFD to thank for ensuring that the fire didn't spread there).

The aftermath of this fire forced locals to take a long hard look at improving firefighting capabilities in the rural sections between Hempstead and Lynbrook. Two and a half years later, on July 26, 1924, Malverne taxpayers voted to lay water mains throughout the village, thus ensuring a supply of water for any future fire emergencies. The incident also generated a firestorm of protest in Lynbrook. The following Monday at a Village Board meeting, 55 taxpaying citizens of that village drafted a letter outlining their outrage at Village President George Wright, who had ordered every available piece of apparatus to fight the fire at the Lindner home. Wright acted apparently without consent of the Fire Chief, leaving his village totally exposed for lack of backup coverage. This despite the fact that the hose wagon and fire engine were completely useless in the fire for lack of a water hookup.

Paul Lindner rebuilt his home and lived there for over a decade before he moved further out on the Island, settling in Smithtown Branch. In 1948 the property was sold to Grace Lutheran Church and in 1952, the edifice shown in the "now" shot was dedicated.

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.

Dr Lewis A W Alleman - One More on Morton Manor

In the previous post, we mentioned that a large parcel of land that came to be known as Morton Manor was the sole remnant of an estate that remained intact during the development that occurred on the Willets Farm in the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the reason why Oak St. is a dead-end road that does not run through to Maplewood St. The estate once belonged to one of the most prominent opthamologists in the country, Dr. Lewis Arthur Welles Alleman (left).

Dr. Alleman a native of Geneva, NY in Seneca County, was born in 1862 during the Civil War to the son of a Union army surgeon. In 1888 he received a medical degree from Jefferson Medical College (now part of Thomas Jefferson University) in Philadelphia and soon after moved to Brooklyn and opened up a practice that specialized in opthamology.

He then went on to publish numerous articles in medical journals and wrote a book entitled Optics as Related to Evolution (D. Appleton, 1891). Among his many achievments, he refined and patented a medical instument called an opthalmo-dynamometer (below) that measures the strength and behavior of eye muscles during convergence.

That same year he married Miss Frances Dudley, a descendant of Thomas Dudley, co-founder of Harvard College and former Governor of the Massachussetts Bay Colony. In 1892 he became chairman of the eye dept. at Long Island Medical College in Brooklyn (now part of SUNY Downstate).

Though his primary residence was in Brooklyn and he retained a summer residence in Seneca County, as can be seen from the 1906 E. Belcher Hyde map (below), he purchased a house and a parcel of land on Maple Ave. (now Maplewood Ave), just south of Hempstead Turnpike. Though it is unclear how extensively Alleman and his family lived at their country place in Hempstead, given the fact that his two daughters, Marion and Elizabeth, attended St. Mary's School for Girls in nearby Garden City, they must have spent some time there.

According to the Nassau County property records, their home (below) was built in 1888.
















Then, in 1908, we find the following notice below in the July 2 edition of the Hempstead Sentinel:

Dr. Alleman eventually moved back to Geneva and, after suffering from an illness, died at the young age of 56. His only son, Dudley (d. 1966), was a WWI veteran who was an ambulance driver and was injured in combat. He eventually married and moved to Massachussetts. Dudley had a daughter, Frances D. A. Luce (d. 2001), who became a prominent child psychologist in Boston. Her son, Jim Luce, is founder and president of Orphans International Worldwide.

The new owner of the property on Maple Ave, Henry Rickmeyer, moved the home just to the north to its present location, and by that fall, moved in with the rest of his family. It wasn't until the early 1950s that the rear of their property was subdivided and the homes built around the Oak St. cul-de-sac.

Morton Manor II and the WH-Trump Connection

As a follow up to a previous post, the two photos above compare a then and now look of Oak St. in the Morton Manor section of West Hempstead, looking west from the intersection of Morton Ave. The "then" shot c. 1928 comes from an advertisement in the Brooklyn Eagle by Preferred Homes, Inc. who purchased lots at auction and then began building houses on neatly arranged 40x100 plots of land. The sellers touted the prime location of the development, a mere stones-throw away from West Hempstead's brand new LIRR station aside a newly electrified line that offered daily service to NYC. Single family 3 bedroom houses went on the market in July 1928 with a price tag of $7,350 ($4,750 down), and after three months, 40 homes had been sold. By October 1929, around 70 had been sold.

Then, in the Fall of that year, the stock market crashed.

Banks went under, credit dried up and people lost their jobs. The Great Depression was well under way and the nation would suffer its effects for the next decade. By the following year, Preferred Homes, Inc. had only 10 homes remaining on the market but understandably had a heck of a time finding buyers. Their answer was to resort to sales gimmicks, such as offering a Chrysler automobile with every remaining home sold.

As the Great Depression wore on, many of the original homebuyers in the Morton Manor development lost their homes to foreclosure. In 1934, the federal government created the Federal Housing Administration to help out the lagging housing market by facilitating more favorable lending terms to home buyers and by insuring the mortgages. In those very early days of the FHA, one of the companies that took advantage of this new entity was a firm called Metropolitan Investors, that proceeded to rehabilitate the homes and put them back on the market. By November, 1935, the New York Times reported that Metropolitan Investors had sold all but three of the homes that they renovated. Credit for the success of this transaction can be given to the head of the company, a young, enterprising 30 year-old real estate developer from Woodhaven named Fred C. Trump. His keen eye for a good business deal would eventually make him one of the wealthiest real estate moguls in the New York area, and would pave the road for the success of his famous son, Donald J. Trump.

The images above show a block that has been left relatively unchanged for over 80 years. Oak St. is curiously the only block in the development that does not run through to Maplewood but terminates as a dead-end. That's because the cul-de-sac portion of the block was once the location of a large property called "Morton Manor" that was not subdivided until around 1950.

More about the original Morton Manor property will come in a follow up post.

The Rasweiler Farm in Dogwood

The 1949 photo above is of a West Hempstead farmer named George Rasweiler who, along with his brothers, ran a large farm in the Dogwood section of WH & Malverne. They inherited the farm from their father John Jacob Rasweiler who immigrated from Germany. The photo most likely looks north, with Dogwood Ave along the right side of the image and it was part of a feature article in the New York Times about how some Long Island farmers were unaffected by a severe drought that plagued farmers in 1949. These farmers, the Rasweilers included, learned how to tap into Long Island's seemingly boundless water table by installing hydraulic well-water pumps on their property which fed into their spray pipes.

The Rasweiler family literally planted roots straddling three local communities - West Hempstead, Malverne and Franklin Square. When Robert Moses laid out the meandering route for the Southern State Parkway through south shore farmland in 1927, most farmers accepted the state's offer for compensation; but not the Rasweilers. In The Power Broker, Robert A. Caro's seminal book on the life of Robert Moses and the alleged strong-arm tactics he used to accomplish his massive civil works projects, the author relates a fascinating account of the confrontation he had with the Rasweilers. As retold by one of John Jacob's sons, Phillip, the family had just spent enormous effort clearing a part of their property to make it suitable for farming, when along came Moses and his men with his proposal for a highway through that property and threatening a defiant John Jacob with eminent domain. A subsequent visit by state surveyors ended up with John Jacob chasing them off his farm with a shotgun. The Southern State was eventually built, effectively splitting the Rasweiler farm in two.

The Rasweilers farmed in WH for another 23 years before selling their land, along with four other local farm owners, to developer Emil Morton in 1950. Morton then went on to build a massive 700-home, post-war development along Dogwood Ave., which also included the shopping center below that still serves as the major business cluster for the Dogwood section of WH and Morton neighborhood of Franklin Square (Best Yet is now the anchor supermarket where Food Fair is shown in the picture) .

The Rasweiler farm was developed as Dogwood Park and the photo below, taken at the corner of Willow Ave., approximates the scene depicted at the top of this blog post.
The Rasweiler legacy in WH & Franklin Square includes the name of Rasweiler Blvd. and their old hundred year-old farm house, which still stands at the corner of their namesake street and Dogwood Ave, shown below.
A couple months ago, Warren Rasweiler, a life-long resident of Malverne and a member of the Malverne Volunteer Fire Dept. for an astonishing 71 years, passed away at age 89. He was, I believe, a grandson of John Jacob Rasweiler. May his memory be for a blessing.

The "Bedell House" in Old Bethpage

The following article first appeared in the Summer 2011 edition of the WH Community Support Association newsletter. A view of the "Bedell House" c. 1918 when it still sat along Hempstead Turnpike. Photo first appeared in Garden and Home Builder magazine in 1926.
Those who are attuned to local history are familiar with the fact that West Hempstead’s oldest and most valued relic can be found at Old Bethpage Village Restoration. The Bedell House was a modest wood frame house built in the 18th Century in colonial style, and was originally located on the north side of Hempstead Turnpike just west of Mayfair Ave. By 1918, it had fallen into disrepair and was rescued by new owners, Carl L. and Lena Otto, who moved the house north toward the Garden City border. Carl L. Otto (pictured at left), a master architect who designed many prominent buildings and bridges in the Northeast, put his knowledge and expertise to work by having the house transported north toward the Garden City border and restored to its former glory. (Long time residents referred to the property surrounding house as Otto’s Woods).

The Roosevelt Savings Bank building on Gates Ave in Brooklyn (below left) and the Washington Street Bridge in Providence, RI (below, right, photo courtesy of Lisa J. Miller) are two examples of Otto's works.














In 1982, Carl's widow Lena, who was 100 years-old by then, donated the home to the Nassau County Parks Dept. who then transported the structure to Old Bethpage where, for the past 30 years, it has awaited a restoration that never happened.

But who owned the house before the Otto’s and how far back does it date to? When it was acquired by Old Bethpage, not much was known about its past and so an effort was made to puzzle together some historical information about the house. It was discovered that homestead dated to the last decade of the 18th century and was traced back to a man named Hiram K. Bedell who expanded the structure in 1835. The Bedell family was prominent throughout Long Island and Hiram’s father, Abraham, was postmaster for Hempstead Village. Beyond this, not much information was available about this home, so I decided to do see if could uncover any other clues about its history. What I discovered startled me.

A little while ago, I came into contact with a descendant of Hiram Bedell who was born and raised in West Hempstead. His grandfather, Alfred McCoun, was born in the Bedell House. (For those who wish to keep score, Hiram and Hannah Bedell had a son, Henry, who had a daughter Mary. Mary Bedell married Willett McCoun who had Alfred. Hiram Bedell died in 1870. His wife, Hannah, died at the age of 98 in 1894 and left 165 living descendants at the time of her death). He was kind enough to share with me a photo of the home of his grandfather from the 19th Century. I instantly noticed some obvious structural differences between the home in the photo and the one at Old Bethpage. This led me to discover that the house, in fact, is not the Bedell House at all, but another home that sat a couple blocks further west on the Turnpike. More importantly, the house may well be much older that previously thought, perhaps built as far back as the early 1700s! In 1926, Carl L. Otto penned an article in the Garden & Home Builder journal, detailing his transportation and renovation of the home. At the time of his purchase, Otto carefully studied some features of the home, particularly the handwrought strap-hinges, h-hinges and hand-made nails used in its construction and, in his expert opinion, concluded that it was at least 175 years-old. If true, that would date the Bedell House to around 1743, almost 50 years older than previously estimated, and would rival the Schenk farmhouse from Manhassett as the oldest house at Old Bethpage. (Some sources at the county have 1730 as the date it was built while another source claims 1765).

But who owned the house before Otto, if it wasn’t the Bedells? A notice in the April 4, 1918 edition of the Hempstead Sentinel at the time the home was originally moved gives us a clue. It was the family of John T. Hanna, a Brooklynite who worked on Wall Street as a stock broker. Hanna purchased the home in the 1870s as a summer retreat in the country for his wife and five children. At the time of his purchase, the property ran all the way back to the Garden City border and included both sides of what today is Mayfair Ave. In 1913, John Hanna died and soon thereafter the house fell into disuse before the Ottos rescued it in 1918. Who the owners of the house were before the Hanna’s still remains to be discovered. Owing to the fact that the house has been uprooted twice, and in the second move, the three chimneys supporting the structure were removed, the building is now beyond repair. It's actually amazing that the house has survived until now. The sturdy pine timbers used by the original owners (the Hannas used to refer to their retreat as "Pine Tree Cottage") have proved remarkably resilient. It has been deemed too deteriorated to warrant restoration and the decision was made to tear it down and build a replica. While the County is still busy securing funding for this project, head down to Old Bethpage and get one last look at a home that has been part of our local landscape for over 350 years.

Above is a view of the home c. 1926, after the Otto's moved it to the WH-Garden City border and restored it.

The "Bedell House" as it appears today at Old Bethpage.