Ode to the Courtesy Hotel - on Its 50th Anniversary

The ad above that appeared in Newsday in 1963 heralded the opening of the Hempstead Motor Hotel, later to become the infamous Courtesy Hotel, at 130 Hempstead Ave.  Believe it or not, at the time of its opening 50 years ago, the Hotel was actually a comfortable and classy option for visitors and tourists who wished to stay local.  Aside from offering a good central location in Western LI, the hotel was conveniently located adjacent to the WHH LIRR station, was across the street from some great shopping at S. Klein and within short walking distance to a number of good eateries including the West End Tavern.    The hotel featured well-appointed rooms (for 1960s standards), a spacious lobby, a steak pub called Winston's, a rooftop swimming pool and sun deck, and an underground bowling alley.  These photos below in full 1960s Technicolor appeared in some promotional postcards for the hotel, and give a sense of what the hotel looked like in those early days ---

A front view from Hempstead Ave

A view of the lobby

The rooftop pool and sun-deck

Interior of a room

In the 1960s and into the '70s the hotel played host to numerous conventions, job fairs and merchant shows.  In June 1964, that sunny rooftop sun deck pictured above was the site of the Miss Long Island beauty pageant, a contest that selected LI's representative for the Miss New York pageant later that year.

In 1971, Winston's reopened as the popular eatery Steak & Brew.  That decade was a period of transition for the hotel, and not in a good way.  By the end of the '70s the hotel's reputation started a long downhill slide that led to its ultimate demise a couple years ago.  In 1978, Nassau County DA Dennis Dillon, predecessor of current DA Kathleen Rice, ran his own version of Operation Flush the Johns with an undercover sting that nabbed a number of area motels, including the Hempstead Motor Hotel, for offering their guests pornographic films on pay-per-view.  Management began advertising "hourly rates" and thereafter the hotel became a magnet of crime with murders, rapes, drug busts, you name it.  The place caused a major strain on emergency resources for both the 5th Precinct and the WH Fire Dept.

In 1989 ownership changed hands and the place was renamed the Courtesy Hotel.  The community came out by the hundreds that year to oppose new owner Frank Zwelsky's plan to expand and enlarge his operation, and that episode galvanized the neighborhood's 20+ year long effort to shutter the hotel.  Indeed, one of the main issues at the forefront of the creation of the WH Civic Association in 1995 was to force the closing of the Courtesy. By the mid 2000s the owners of the hotel found a firm willing to buy the property and develop an apartment complex that won the approval of WH residents, but it took a few years and a number of Mother's Day rallies before the Town of Hempstead finally agreed to rezone the property into "transit-oriented" status in order to accommodate the developer's plans.  In May 2011, the wrecking ball dealt the final death-blow to the Courtesy and, roughly 16 months later, arose West 130, the luxury apartment building pictured below that took its place.

Front view of West 130

Highlights of Early Horse History in West Hempstead

The following article appeared, with slight modifications, in the Summer 2013 edition of the WHCSA News & Views newsletter.

The grand opening of the revamped New York Equestrian Center on Eagle Ave provides an opportunity to highlight some of the more illustrious moments in horse-riding history in West Hempstead.  That history dates back to time when the horse was still the preferred mode of travel to get around.  Some time around 1910, the first riding school in WH was started by famed equestrian circus star Josephine DeMott Robinson on her farm on Hempstead Avenue near Johnson’s Lane.   Robinson knew a little something about riding, as she was purportedly the first woman in the world to perform backwards somersaults on a moving horse.  Robinson continued this operation until 1917 when she sold her farm and moved to Hempstead Village.

In 1922, WWI veteran Paul C. Lienhard moved to WH and opened the Lake View Riding Academy at the corner of Oak(ford) St. and Woodfield Rd.  Lienhard was a captain in US Army cavalry division and after the War, he had been working as an instructor at the US Army’s cavalry school in Ft. Riley, KS before moving east.   In the 1920s, members of the military community had increasingly viewed the use of horses in the Army as outdated and questioned their usefulness in battle when tank divisions (“mechanized cavalry”, as it was called then) were the order of the day.  Ever the horseman, Lienhard sought to prove the usefulness and durability of the cavalry by embarking on a solo cross-country horseback ride, literally cross-country, from New York to Los Angeles.  

On a warmer than usual winter day on December 13, 1927, the 37-year old Lienhard mounted an Army mare named Black Bess and left the Malverne train station for a 3,700-mile ride to the West Coast.  Twenty five days into his trip, after averaging about 42 miles a day, he paused briefly in St. Louis to talk to a United Press reporter about his expedition and continued on his way.  After 102 days on the trail, while cantering through the Arizona desert outside Yuma, Black Bess was bitten by a huge rattlesnake.  The old mare wavered but within 20 minutes, she dropped dead, 180 miles short of Lienhard’s goal.

In 1931 Lienhard moved his riding school to Mill Road (Peninsula Blvd) in Hempstead to be closer to the bridle trails that were laid down in the new Hempstead Lake State Park.  His was but one of half a dozen riding academies and stables that sprouted up along Mill Rd. in those days.   Lienhard counted among his prize students Gen. Chen Cheng,  Chief-of-staff  to Chiang Kai Shek and his representative at the UN, and two-time Academy Award winning actress Luise Rainer. (Parenthetically, Luise is still alive today and at 103 years young, she is currently the oldest surviving Oscar-winning actor).

The current stables on Eagle Ave. dates back to 1926, according to County records, shortly after the deal was announced to develop Hempstead Lake as a state park. 

In that year John Wellbrock opened the Paramount Riding Academy.  In the 1930s, ownership was turned over to Charles Heinsohn who renamed it Lakeside Riding Academy, a name that survived until about six years ago, and ran it for the next number of decades.

Aerial photo of Lakeview Riding Stables on Eagle Ave, circa 1947.  The stable houses that flank the entrance at he upper left of the photo are all that remain of the original complex.  Eagle Ave. cuts horizontally along the photo and Park Ave. runs vertically at the right of the image.

Though by WWII, the use of horses in a military capacity was all but obsolete, the cavalry would have one more opportunity to prove their efficacy in the war effort, and Lakeside Stables played a central role at the time.   In June 1942, Americans were shocked to learn of a botched Nazi infiltration at Amagansett by four German saboteurs who had swam to shore from a U-boat, a plot that would later be known as Operation Pastorius.  The incident set the entire region on edge and highlighted the need for a civilian patrol along the hundreds of miles of Long Island coastline.  On August 3, in response to a call by the Coast Guard to set up regular patrols along LI’s shores, a group of 50 expert horsemen, many of whom were WWI cavalry veterans, met at the Lakeside Stables and set up a staging area there.  These patrols were an important component in defending the Homeland from any further enemy infiltrations.

Like a candle that flickers bright before it burns out, the beginning of 1943 brought conventional transportation-by-horse into major prominence one last time, after fuel-rationing during WWII was the cause of a pleasure driving ban in the East Coast region.  Long Islanders had to get creative to get around.  So, following the lead of the Hempstead High football team, many local schools hired out horses and wagons to transport their sports teams to their games.  Theaters, restaurants and bowling alleys built hitches out in their parking lots for their horseback-riding customers.  It would be the last time that horses would be used for conventional transportation to that extent in our area, before finally giving way to motorized vehicles, and the numerous stables on LI at the time played a major role in providing horse-transportation during the WWII fuel shortage.

In 1954, Peninsula Blvd. was laid out between Hempstead and Rockville Centre and thereafter, one by one, the old stables and riding academies on the eastern side of Hempstead Lake closed down, while Lakeside on the western side remains as the only riding stables left from that bygone era.

In later years, Suzanne Benedict and Brian McTigue partnered to run the Stables, until they sold it in 2006 to the current owners, Alex Jacobson and Benjamin Haghani.  The initial plan was to redevelop the 1.2 acre site into condominiums, but after recognizing the value of the stables to the community, Jacobson and Haghani opted instead to rebuild the riding academy into a world-class facility, as the newly minted NY Equestrian Center.

The WHCSA and the West Hempstead Now and Then blog wish Mr. Jacobson best of luck and continued success in preserving one of West Hempstead and Lakeview’s prized local treasures.

100th Anniversary of School District 27 and the Chestnut Street School

The following article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 edition of the WHCSA News & Views newsletter.

Early photo of Chestnut St School. (Courtesy of the WH Historical Society)

Last month, February 3^rd, 2013 marked the 100^th anniversary of the opening of the Chestnut Street School, West Hempstead’s first schoolhouse and purportedly the oldest school building still in use in Nassau County.  This edition of A Look Back in Time examines the beginnings of School District 27 and the Chestnut Street School.

The origins of public education in the West Hempstead area stretches back to the 1820s when district 17 was created to serve children who lived in an area covering a large swath of rural countryside west of Hempstead Village.  The first schoolhouse built for this district was a one-room affair crowned by a bell tower, erected at the southern corner of Dogwood Avenue and John Street (now Nassau Boulevard).  The building was known then as the Trimming Square School, taking the name of the tiny village centered at the intersection of John Street and the Hempstead & Jamaica Plank Road.  Perhaps the most significant historical tidbit about the Trimming Square School was the brief stint that a young 20 year-old Walt Whitman spent there as schoolmaster in 1840, right around the time that he introduced the world to the sublime poetry that would solidify his renown as “America’s Poet”.  (When Whitman penned the lines -

The noble trees, the sweet young flowers,
The birds that sing in forest bowers,
The rivers grand that murmuring roll,
And all which joys or calms the soul
Are made by gracious might

published in the May 1840 edition of the Long Island Democrat during his tenure at Trimming Square, could it be that he drew his inspiration from the idyllic scene across Nassau Blvd. where a crystal-clear Pine Brook once gently meandered south through the woods and emptied into a lily-blanketed Hall’s Pond?)

The schoolhouse continued to serve the needs of local children until 1894, when an addition of a second room was necessitated.  A decade-and-a-half later, a couple of neighborhood subdivisions, starting with the Fairlawn Park section in 1906, brought numerous new residents to West Hempstead, and once again, SD17 faced a shortage of space at its aging schoolhouse.  By April 1911, the 29 families of SD17 from West Hempstead openly discussed forming a new school district to commence in the Fall of 1912, and thereafter they arranged a series of meetings to work out details including boundary lines, location of the new school, and the election of a new board.   On Wednesday, August 9, 1911, a vote was held in Norwood Chapel (WH’s first church located at the corner of Hempstead Ave and Oak[ford] St.) where residents of West Hempstead passed a resolution to authorize the establishment of a Union Free School District.  Later that Fall, on October 7, voters gave almost unanimous approval to Proposition 3, to raise $3,000 to purchase a centrally located school site at Chestnut Street.  That vote, however, was declared illegal due to its short and inadequate notice, and another vote was scheduled for November when once again, Prop. 3 was carried.  Hempstead architect I.B. Baylis was then promptly chosen to design a four-room school building.

The first ever school taxes for SD27 were scheduled to be paid in December 1911 and a paltry rate of 44 cents per $100 of assessed property valuation was set.  (To give you an idea of how different a world we live in and how far our school taxes have come since then, consider the case of Robert Wilcox, who at the time was about to begin construction of a new home at 555 Cedar Street.  Using his actual purchase price of his lot at $1,600 and his actual construction cost of $3,200, Wilcox’s annual tax bill would have come to $21.12.   Factoring for inflation, in today’s dollars that would have been like paying $462.  And this, mind you, was before the implementation of a Federal income tax, which would not come until the following year!)

Title of the Chestnut property was acquired by the district on June 1 and shortly thereafter notices requesting sealed bids were sent out for the construction of the schoolhouse.  A vote at the Chapel on the 21^st elected the district’s first trustees, whereupon a local real estate man named Paul Ohrtman was chosen as President of the Board of Education.  (Ohrtman went on to have a prolific local civic career where, in addition to SD27 Board President, he served as Fire Commissioner, Sanitation Dist. 6 Commissioner, and TOH Receiver of Taxes.  He died in 1967 at age 91).  An Irish teacher from Upstate New York named Mary Davern, a veteran of 32 years who had previously taught the upper grades at Trimming Square, was chosen as Principal of the new school.

In August, the winning bid for the building of the school went to a local contractor named Carl Mirschel, whose yard was located in WH on the Turnpike and who had built extensively throughout the area.  Construction hastily commenced, but in the interim a home on Woodfield Road was leased from Franklin Duryea to be used as a temporary school until the Chestnut building was ready.   This home hosted the first ever day of classes for the nascent district on Monday, September 9^th.  Meanwhile that Fall, contractor Mirschel was working at a fever pitch and by November, he had enclosed the outer structure of the Chestnut building. 

Monday, February 3, 1913 was chosen as the move-in date despite the fact that the interior of the school was not quite finished, and on that date, without much fanfare, the Chestnut Street School was inaugurated.

Over the years, Chestnut underwent two significant expansions to meet the needs of the growing district: the first when a south wing was added in 1925 and a second when a north wing 1947.  However, the original building with its distinctive bell-tower remains intact and is a testament to its sturdy construction, over 100 years ago.

A&P - Western Beef

The photo above (courtesy of Dave over at the Pleasant Family Shopping Blog) shows the A&P supermarket that was built at 103 Woodfield Rd, shortly after it opened in 1968.  In 1965, the owners of the home and flower shop on that property, Emil and Sophie Baumgartner, began proceedings to have their lot rezoned from residential to business to develop a supermarket and mini-strip mall at the location.  Despite some opposition from neighbors, given the fact that the property was flanked on either side by commercial businesses (on the north by the Hempstead Seed Co. and on the south by the Nassau County Mental Health Assn. rehabilitation center), the TOH granted the request and shortly thereafter ground was broken on the development.  At the same time, the Baumgartners had their home moved further south so that it would front Cedar Street while they continued to run their flower shop for a while in the new strip mall.  

Throughout the '60s, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (a.k.a. A&P) embarked on a strategy to stem the tide of its slow decline as a supermarket chain.  The company faced stiff competition from newer and bigger stores that left most of the existing A&P chains feeling small and dated.  Part of this strategy was a blitz of new "centennial stores" to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the company, where the buildings would be designed in the "early American style".  The West Hempstead A&P was opened in 1968 (photo depicted above.  The photo shows a checkout attendant helping a lady load her bags into what looks like a new '67 or '68 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon, the way they used to do it in the "old days").

Sometime in the mid '90s, A&P vacated the location and it was taken over by Western Beef.  Below is a "now" shot, taken roughly at the same angle as the photo above, showing the monstrous Western Beef sign that just about obscures any vestige of the building's original architectural features. (Note the iron fence along the roof is still there).

Over the years, the adjacent mini-strip mall has seen many tenants come and go. However, one of them, Fel's Hair Creations, has been in business at that location for forty years, since almost the beginning of the mall's inception. 

Comparing the then and now shots below, the old triangular pediment from the original design still peeks out above the new sign, as well as the original cupola and weather vane.

To me, shopping today at this Western Beef has kind of a retro feel to it, since very little changes have been made to modernize the interior, and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but they always seem to pipe through what sounds like Greatest Hits of the 70s over the store loudspeakers.  I almost feel like I'm in a time warp over there, bargain hunting for food deals with my mom, pushing a half-broken shopping cart with wheels that never seem to all roll in the same direction.  Western Beef also plays host to the "Pickle People", an old West Hempstead business held over from the old Shoppers Village days back in the 80s.  

Hempstead Gardens LIRR Station

The above photo looks northeastward showing the Hempstead Gardens LIRR station some time after the platform and station house was moved 350ft to the north in December 1933.  Before that time, the station was located south of Chestnut St. and the crossing at Chestnut, the only one for nearly a mile north or south, made a precarious single lane "elbow route" from one side to the other where motorists and pedestrians had to navigate a dangerous sharp turn across the tracks.  (Keep in mind that until 1956, the LIRR also ran freight service along the WH line with no stops or slowdowns at the passenger stations). For years, residents and civic groups petitioned the LIRR to fix the crossing, particularly for the benefit of school children who walked to and from the Chestnut St. School, and the WH Fire Dept. who could barely manage to fit their fire apparatus through the bend that was a mere 12ft wide.  These petitions fell on deaf ears at the LIRR until August 1933 when the Public Service Commission ordered the railroad company to fix the crossing in the interest of public safety.  The LIRR made an additional improvement by building the new station so that Railroad Avenue (now called Hempstead Gardens Drive) would be unobstructed, whereas the previous station jutted out into the street.

In the ensuing years, the LIRR's improvement did little to increase safety.  In fact, the direct, unguarded crossing made the situation much worse. The site became the scene of some fatal and near fatal collisions.  Among them:

•  In November 1941, James Moores' vehicle was struck by an oncoming train and burst into flames when it hit the third rail.  A brave bystander rescued Moores from the inferno before his car was reduced to a charred skeletal heap. (Following the accident, when a reporter from the LI Star Journal questioned the LIRR about the dangerous conditions at Chestnut St, which lacked any gates, lights or warning bells, an LIRR spokesman assured him that Chestnut was a "protected crossing".  When probed further about what features qualified Chestnut as a "protected crossing", the spokesman pointed out with a straight face that there was a sign there that read "Watch out for the train".)
• In March 1942, Christoph Koenig's milk truck was struck by an eastbound train.  (The driver escaped unhurt).
• Most tragic of all, on the night of Jan. 14, 1947, a train struck the car of a 21 year-old WWII Navy veteran and WH resident named Richard Stanley and his fiance Jane Alford, killing him instantly and critically injuring the young woman.  The couple was to be married that March.  A day later, Alford too succumbed to her injuries and died at Meadowbrook Hospital.

In 1956, there was a proposal to eliminate the Hempstead Gardens station altogether, but at an LIRR meeting on Jan. 9 of that year, residents voted overwhelmingly against the proposal. (197 against vs. 67 for).

It wasn't until March 1966 when the LIRR finally got around to installing automatic crossing gates at Chestnut St.  Below is a photo of the Hempstead Gardens Station as it looked on Jan. 1, 1972 (Photo taken by Dave Keller at roughly the same angle as the above photo), with Hempstead Gardens Drive running behind it. (The street was officially renamed Hempstead Gardens Dr. by the TOH board on Jan 4, 1955).

The photo shows a station that was built at ground level, 22 months before the LIRR raised the platform five feet to accommodate their new "metropolitan trains".  The WH line was the last of all the LIRR branches to continue using the old MU trains (shown in the picture), where passengers had to navigate a flight of stairs to board and disembark their train.

Below is a "now" shot of the two photos above, (photo courtesy of Jeremiah Cox, a.k.a the Subway Nut).

Notice the white three story home at 347 Hempstead Gardens Dr. built in 1908, is visible in all three photos.

Marian M. Delaney (Eagle Avenue) School

The picture above comes from the front page of the Hempstead Sentinel from February 28, 1929 and is a front view of a newly built school on Eagle Avenue.  The building was District 27's second school to be built, following the Chestnut Street School in 1912.  During its first decade, the WH school district experienced a steady increase in its student population and by 1924, a four-room addition was built at Chestnut to accommodate the influx of students.  But very shortly, even that proved inadequate. A series of meetings was then organized with the purpose of selecting two additional sites for schools, one in the southern section of the district, and another in the northern section.   A 3-4 acre parcel was chosen on Oak(ford) St. with a purchase price of $15,000 and its acquisition would be decided by a voter referendum on March 1, 1926.  In one of the most closely contested votes in District 27 history, residents rejected the proposal 113 to 110.  Owing to the closeness of the vote, the school board decided to resubmit the proposal again the following month.  Again, voters rejected it, this time by a count of 92 to 73.

The following year, on March 31, a vote was passed to acquire a $25K parcel on Eagle Avenue near the corner of Woodfield Rd.  After a heated meeting, on April 26th, 1927, two bond proposals were floated, one for a $400K 16-room school house and the other for a $260K eight-room school to be built at that site.  Both were soundly rejected.  Finally on August 16, a $200,000 bond issue was approved and work commenced on the new school in the fall.  A local firm from Hempstead, Kirwin Estabrook Construction Corp. was awarded the contract for the work.  The firm specialized in school construction and had just recently completed the Fulton Ave School and Garden City School, among others.  Ground was broken on Nov. 14. In a rare example of public works efficiency, construction of the eight-room building came in under budget at $185,000 and on Monday, November 5, 1928, nearly a year after work had started, students moved into their new school.  The date for a formal dedication ceremony was chosen to coincide with Washington's Birthday and on February 21, 1929, the new building was dedicated amid much fanfare.

Among the faculty that first year was a sixth-grade teacher named Marian Delaney, who soon worked her way up to assistant principal and eventually principal of the school.  In 1963, she retired and the following year, in appreciation of her 35 years at the school, the district decided to rededicate the Eagle Avenue School by renaming it the Marian M. Delaney school.  Below is a photo of district officials conferring the naming of the school after Ms. Delaney (right), who is visibly moved by the gesture.

On November 6, 1949, an east wing addition to the building was dedicated, but by the 1970s, a declining enrollment forced the district to consolidate the student body of the southern section with the Cornwell Ave School. Parents petitioned the State Supreme Court unsuccessfully to keep the school open and by the 1981-82 school year, the district vacated Eagle Ave.  For a time thereafter, the building was rented out by Adelphi University to run adult education programs.  After that, Nassau County has since utilized the school for its BOCES program, but it was announced this past year that the County would not extend its lease beyond 2013, leaving the building's future in doubt.

Below is a "now" shot of the Eagle Ave "Marian M. Delaney" School.

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.