Echo Echo Echo Echo Echo Ten Interesting Facts About Garden City Kippy Donovan
I have resided in Garden City for my entire life, yet during my recent interview of local historian, John Ellis Kordes, I realized how little I actually knew about the history of our wonderful village. Mr. Kordes, who is a professional photographer and a historian of Garden City for some 25 years, is widely known for the two editions of his highly regarded book, Visions of Garden City, as well as for his two documentary films, “A.T. Stewart’s Garden City” and the “The Long Island Motor Parkway.” Over the years, Mr. Kordes has been responsible for popular bus and walking tours of Garden City, has written hundreds of articles for the local newspapers and is a frequent lecturer. Fortunately, when I asked Mr. Kordes for an interview, he was gracious enough to share his time and considerable knowledge of Garden City. For instance, the founder of Garden City, A.T. Stewart, was of Scotch- Irish descent and came to New York City as a young man. He went on to create the concept of the department store which bore his name (A.T. Stewart & Co,.) and became one of the wealthiest men in the world. Mr. Kordes notes, that at the time of his death in 1876, Stewart was estimated to be worth the equivalent of $50 billion in today’s dollars. To this day, he is considered to be in the top ten of the wealthiest people who ever lived in America. Stewart founded Garden City in 1869 when he purchased almost 10,000 acres of his treeless Hempstead Plains. This area was two-thirds the size of Manhattan. I was surprised to learn that Stewart never actually lived in Garden City, rather, our founder and his wife, Cornelia, lived in a
mansion in New York City. The couple had no children who survived birth. Initially, in 1872, there were ten identical first houses built in Garden City. Older histories have mentioned nine or twelve, but Kordes states that there were actually ten. Six of these homes remain today (three on Rockaway, one on Hilton, one on Cathedral and one on Eleventh Street). These ten houses were nicknamed “Apostle Houses” by the children at the Cathedral School. In October 1917, the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants, the two teams that had just competed in the World Series, played an exhibition baseball game at St. Paul’s School. According to Kordes, the purpose of the game was to entertain the troops from Camp Mills, which was located in the southeastern section of Garden City and housed troops during WWI. Have you ever wondered why there are so many train stations in the village? It turns out that in the 1870s, Garden City actually had its own railroad. Known as the Stewart Central Railroad of L.I., it is now part of the Long Island Railroad. Consequently, we have five active stops and it was once six (when the Clinton Road stop was active). Also unbeknownst to me, the St. Paul’s athletic field was named Trump Field in 1956, in honor of Fred Trump, who had donated money to have the fields improved. Two of his sons, Fred Jr., ’56 and Robert, ’66 both graduated from St. Paul’s School, but the other Trump son, Donald Trump, went to a military school. When the village incorporated in 1919, we had just over 2,000 people
living here. Also, in 1919 we had less than 400 houses, but by 1970, we had over 6,500. While we have over 22,000 people living in Garden City today, the population actually peaked at over 25,000 in 1970. “MAST”, the high school yearbook, got its name from the flagpole at the original high school (today’s middle school). The first high school, built in 1924, acquired the mast from the America’s Cup racing boat Shamrock in 1935 to use as a flagpole. Garden City’s first mayor, George Hubbell, was behind these efforts. The flagpole was blown down in the 1950s during a hurricane and replaced with the current flagpole but the name “MAST” has endured all these years. Back when Roosevelt Field was actually an airfield, it acquired its name in 1918 from Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son Quentin. Unfortunately, Quentin, who was trained there as a pilot, was killed in the fighting in Europe in 1918 during WWI. Today’s shopping mall retains the name, but is not actually part of Garden City (although it shares the same zip code) and pays no taxes to Garden City. The Village of Garden City is governed by eight trustees (two from each of the four property owners associations). They serve without pay and the mayor is selected from among them. Every two years, a different trustee from a different section gets to be mayor. This system of government is called the “Community Agreement” and dates to 1919.
Courtesy of Wikipedia
Courtesy of NYPL Digital Library
Courtesy of m.simon.com
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