Dogwood Knolls - A Former Local Farm with a Familiar Story

Pick a random home under 60 years-old in the Malverne/ West Hempstead area and chances are that it sits on what was once a typical piece of Central Nassau County farmland with a familiar ring to its history that at the same time offers its own unique story to tell. That history typically includes what started out at the turn of the 20th century as a 40 or 50 acre tract upon which its owner, more likely than not a German immigrant, grew produce that would be harvested and then transported every season by truck to markets in New York City. The owner likely lived in a quaint farmhouse with his immediate family, perhaps even some of his extended family, and enjoyed a quiet country life in a neighborhood where the pace of life moved slowly, where things remained relatively unchanged until just after WWII.

Then, after the war, a major transformation occurred in Nassau County. There was a serious shortage of houses in the New York metro area, where heavy demand was spurred on by returning GIs who were eager to settle down and start a family. As a result of this demand, most of these Long Island farmers took deals that were too good to pass up and sold to developers who platted and subdivided their former land into neatly arranged properties whereupon mass produced, pre-designed, cookie-cutter homes would soon be built. In a relatively short period, houses began sprouting up everywhere, leaving a dearth of existing open space that remains in the aging suburbs of Nassau County.

Such is the story of a 45-acre farm on the western side of Dogwood Ave. on the West Hempstead/ Franklin Square border and its owner, Peter Wenk. Wenk voyaged across the Atlantic from Germany in 1892 as a young, enterprising 24 year-old bachelor full of hopes and ambitions that were characteristic of so many immigrants of that time. Shortly after arriving, he quickly found employment with Herman Breyer, a well-known florist from Elmhurst. Two years later, he married and started a family and all the while carefully squirreled away his savings until he was able to branch out and establish his own business. In 1898, he moved to Ozone Park and set up a series of greenhouses on a newly purchased plot of land where he cultivated marketable house plants and flowers. His flower shop became so prosperous that in just twenty years time, Peter Wenk & Sons Florists became the largest and most successful of its kind in all of Queens, according to one report.

The rapid expansion of his business necessitated the acquisition of more farmland. He found what he was looking for in what was then the rural community of Munson, L.I., where in 1916 he purchased a fertile plot from John Lewis Childs, founder of Floral Park and owner of the world-famous JL Childs Seed Co. Thereupon, he moved out to Long Island with his wife and four children, where the family planted roots - literally and figuratively - in the community and continued to farm there until 1950. In that year, developer David Coleman, president of Rutgers Homes, Inc., purchased the property to erect 175 bungalow-type homes similar to the one in the  photo above, in a new $2.5 million colony to be called Dogwood Knolls. This photo appeared in the Sunday, November 19, 1950 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle together with a quarter-page advertisement heralding the first showing of this new development.

This three-bedroom ranch, located at the corner of Dogwood Ave. and Cornell Rd., also served as the development's model home and typified a popular architectural style of that era, featuring amenities that were considered cutting-edge at the time - scientific kitchens, dishwashers, washing machines, and automatic oil burners. In 1950, the Dogwood Avenue corridor was among the most rapidly expanding sections in Nassau County and Dogwood Knolls was but a small part of an overall development of more than 1,200 nearby homes that year, complete with a new, large 25-unit shopping center just down the road.

An added attraction touted by the Dogwood Knolls advertisments was that their homes were not subject to the imposition of a clause called "Regulation X". What was Regulation X? In September 1950, Congress passed the Defense Production Act in response to the start of the Korean War. Among various war powers enumerated in this bill, federal government was granted authority to regulate the terms of home mortgages to ensure that there would be no shortage of building materials that might hamper the war effort and also to curb economic factors in the housing market that might spur inflation. As a result, the Federal Reserve Board set minimums for the percentage of a down payment and interest rates on a home loan, a part of the Defense Production Act entitled Regulation X, which had the effect of cooling down a housing market that was red hot in 1950. Dogwood Knolls gleefully announced that their mortgage commitments were obtained before the passage of the DPA and therefore were not subject to its restrictions. That meant that a lucky veteran who purchased a $12,990 home could pay 10% down or $1,299, and at the going 4% interest rate that was offered back then, would pay just $72/ month on a 20-year mortgage. (Think about that next time your monthly mortgage is due.).

Over the next couple decades, area home development reached a saturation point and interest rates charted a path to a steady climb, never again to dip to those kinds of 1950s levels, until only recently.
 
The story of the Wenk Farm/Dogwood Knolls is a familiar and recurring one for properties of our neighborhood, and one that has shaped the local landscape of Malverne and West Hempstead into what it is today.

Junard Homes Development on the Lindner Farm

The "then" shot above looks east on Colonade Rd. toward its curve northward toward Knollwood Dr., and shows a collection of freshly built houses in 1951 that were part of the 147-unit Junard Homes development.  The property was originally a 34-acre farm owned by Henry Lindner, older brother of Paul W. F. Lindner, that extended from Nassau Blvd. to the east to Dogwood Ave. to the west, with Hawthorne St. as the southern border of the farm. Henry was born in Germany in 1866 and at age 4, came to America with his family where they settled in Washington Square (West Hempstead). Henry continued in his father George's footsteps and engaged in farming. In 1947, Henry's wife Anna died and in 1951, like so many other local landowners, the old farmer accepted an offer that was probably too good to pass up and sold his farm to a home developer.

The developer, Brooklyn native Saul Z. Sokolov, president of the Junard Construction Corp., had a proven track record accross Long Island and eventually established himself as one of the more prolific home builders in the region. His first major home project was a pre-war development on Lakeview Ave in Rockville Centre called Knollwood. Saul was a director of the prestigious LI Home Builders Institute. The Sokolovs were also West Hempstead residents for a time before later moving to Kings Point on the North Shore. After WWII, he went on to build many developments in and around West Hempstead: Garden City South (Nassau Blvd & 8th St., in 1947), Mayfair Section of WH (Concord & Hamilton Aves, between Broadway and Mayfair, and later Groton Pl. in 1948), Franklin Square (Franklin Ave & Polk St, in 1948), Garden City South (Nassau Blvd & Princeton Rd., in 1949).

For the Junard Homes development in WH, Saul brought in his son Richard, a recent Syracuse University graduate with a degree in engineering, as a principle of the company. In fact, the name "Junard" comes from a fusion of the names of Saul's daughter and son, June and Richard. (Now the names of the street in that section start to make sense - Junard Blvd., Knollwood Dr., June Ct., Lindner Pl. The meaning behind the name Colonade is still a mystery to me.)

The homes were marketed as 4 1/2 to 7 room capes and ranches with a price range of $14,900 - $20,900. The first of these homes, the ones you see pictured above, were ready for occupancy by September 1, 1951 and the remainder were quickly sold.

Saul Sokolov Died in 1977 and Richard went on to serve in the Kings Point Village government for over 30 years, first as a member of the the planning board commission, then as deputy mayor. He stepped down this year at age 85, having served as a village trustee.

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.