ATDTDA (12) Don't Bogart That Hempstead [328:16]

[Keith]

[328:16] "along the dusty and clamorous North Hempstead Turnpike"

Booth Memorial Avenue, which runs from College Point Blvd to the LIE,  
was formerly known as North Hempstead Turnpike, a gloriously  
incongruous name since it did not extend out to the town of Hempstead  
in Nassau County. In the tradition of NYC roads like Flushing Avenue  
and White Plains Road, it was likely named because it led to roads  
which would take you to Hempstead. When the road was named in the  
1800s, the town of Hempstead was in Queens, but when Queens joined  
NYC in 1898, three of Queens' easternmost towns opted out to become  
Nassau.

It was renamed (probably in the late 1950s) for Booth Memorial  
Hospital at Main Street. However, the 'new' name is now also  
outdated, since Booth Memorial became New York Hospital in the 1980s.  
So, let's go back to the old name! (Won't happen.) Both avenue and  
hospital are named for William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.

Incidentally, Northern Boulevard formerly became a completely  
different North Hempstead Turnpike once it reached the Nassau County  
line, but that made more sense, since it was entering...the town of  
North Hempstead.

Lastly, the Hempstead Turnpike that reaches the town of Hempstead as  
State Route #24 actually does begin in Queens, a few miles east from  
Jamaica Avenue in Queens Village; it is known as Hempstead Avenue  
while within Queens.
   http://www.forgotten-ny.com/NEIGHBORHOODS/freshmeadows/ 
freshmeadows2.html

The modern history of Munsey Park dates to the early part of the  
twentieth century.  The area was almost totally large estate farmland  
with rolling hills, natural and verdant wooded landscape abounding  
with small game, and only occasionally broken by developed  
homesites.  In the case of the larger estates such as the 300 acres  
owned by Louis Sherry, the wealthy French confectioner[1], the chief  
residence was a prominent chateau modeled after the ‘Petit Trianon’  
at Versailles .  The total population in all of Manhasset at that  
time in the early 1920's was about 900 people.

The Sherry estate and his mansion were among the properties purchased  
by Frank A. Munsey in 1922 -- he remodeled and enlarged the home into  
its present elegant form we know as the Strathmore-Vanderbilt Country  
Club.  Through additional purchases of small and medium sized tracts,  
Munsey finally amassed some 663 acres.  The estate included all of  
the present Munsey Park, extending south across North Hempstead  
Turnpike (where trolley cars of the N.Y. & North Shore Traction  
Company had operated until My 1920) -- into the Strathmores, abutting  
the Nicholas Brady (Inisfada) Estates on the east and to the  
approximate location of Deepdale Drive on the west.
   http://www.munseypark.org/historymainpg.html

The view is looking northwest, and the LIMP bridge is the North  
Hempstead Turnpike overpass. Mitch and Fred agree that the picture  
was taken in early-mid 1955 because PS 179, in the right background,  
was under construction (it opened in September 1955).
   http://home.att.net/~Berliner-ultrasonics/limp-qn2.html

After peace and order were restored and the Town of North Hempstead  
severed from the Town of Hempstead, North Shore transportation  
improved. The North Hempstead Turnpike, now called Northern  
Boulevard, opened in 1801, though travelers had to pay 2 cents to use  
it from Roslyn to Spinney Hill in Manhasset. By 1830 Port residents  
had stagecoach service to the city, and in 1836, steamboats to Lower  
Manhattan.
   http://www.apartmentrentalslongisland.com/aboutportwashington.htm

The Roslyn that Onderdonk found in 1752 was a Dutch-English  
settlement called Head of the Harbor, and later, Hempstead Harbor. It  
is believed to have been the spot where the first English colonists  
from Connecticut landed in 1643 and then pushed south to Hempstead on  
an old Indian trail, now Roslyn Road. Early settlers also found an  
east-west path leading to Flushing; it became North Hempstead  
Turnpike in 1801, and later, Northern Boulevard.
   http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-historytown- 
hist002i,0,6458690.story

Flushing was originally called Vlissingen, after a place in the  
Netherlands. The settlers erected a blockhouse near the pond at a  
point later known as Union Street and Broadway. Prior to 1821 the  
only road between Little Neck and Flushing Village was through what  
was later known as the "alley," winding its way round about and over  
hills and increasing the distance more than two miles before reaching  
its terminus at the "lonely barn." In 1824 the road from Little Neck  
Hotel was donated, a causeway constructed, and a ridge built at  
Wynandt Van Zandt's expense, who owned the land. In 1824 the road was  
turnpiked to Roslyn and three years later to Oyster Bay. It was known  
as the Flushing and North Hempstead Turnpike Road and later as  
Broadway. An Indian trail formerly existed there and in widening the  
road the Indian burying ground at Little Neck, where for two  
centuries the remains of the red men had rested, had to be cut off.
   http://www.hopefarm.com/5boros.htm





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