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GLEN COVE GUIDE
www.liherald.com
Brush up on your local trivia
Did you know?
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ong-time residents know many of the stories and myths of prominent people who lived in or visited Glen Cove, including: • The story of Capt. William Kidd, who may have buried (and then retrieved) some of his ill-gotten treasure from a spot at Sheep-Pen Point (Garvies Point). • Frank Winfield Woolworth, the Five and Dime King, and how his empire of F.W. Woolworth stores funded his marble-façade mansion in Glen Cove, and also the Woolworth Building in New York City, which was the world’s tallest skyscraper when it was dedicated. • The financier J.P. Morgan Jr. owned an entire island in Glen Cove – East Island – that comprised his vast estate “Matinecock Point,” and which is more often called Morgan Island. • The Brooklyn Dodgers’ Roy Campanella and the New York Yankees’ Whitey Ford both made their homes in Glen Cove. That’s a lot of cornstarch!
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he largest cornstarch manufacturing company in the world was located in Glen Cove. The Duryea family established the Glen Cove Starch Manufacturing Company at the head of the Glen Cove Creek in 1855. It quickly grew to become Glen Cove’s largest employer, and eventually, under the name National Starch Manufacturing Company, became the world’s largest. The starch works was completely destroyed by fire in 1906 and never rebuilt. The “Father of the American Roller Coaster"
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a Marcus A. Thompson, who developed the first planned community in Glen Cove, and resided there — Thompson Park — was better known for his development of the roller coaster. His “Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway,” for which he obtained a patent, opened at Brooklyn’s Coney Island in 1884, and riders were
charged a nickel to ride it at the breathtaking speed of up to 10 mph. Although competitors capitalized on his design, Thompson continued to improve his design by adding tunnels, lights, and scenery to what he later called the “L.A. Thompson Scenic Railway,” and which eventually came to be known as the “roller coaster.” Obtaining 30 patents along the way, he constructed 50 of these early roller coasters across the country in four years, and in 1888 began building his more advanced “scenic railways” around the world. His most notable scenic railway opened in Venice, Calif., in 1910. While Thompson is not credited with the invention of the roller coaster, he has been deemed the “Father of the American Roller Coaster” and the “Father of the Gravity Ride” by many, particularly because his innovations introduced the roller coaster to the masses. Distinguished for honor
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ergeant-Major Daniel Joseph Daly, USMC (1873-1937), was born in Glen Cove and served as a U.S. Marine during the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, for which service he received the first Medal of Honor decoration. His second award of the Medal of Honor was for actions in Haiti in 1915, where U.S. Forces were deployed to put down a rebellion, making him one of only 19 servicemen to earn the medal twice. Daly also received the Navy Cross for conspicuous action in the Battle of Belleau Wood in France during World War I. A Fletcher-class destroyer commissioned during World War II was named for SGT-MAJ Dan Daly and the Arterial Highway (Route 107) entering Glen Cove is also named for this heroic son of our city.
