Trivia

Page 28 GLEN COVE GUIDE www.liherald.com Brush up on your local trivia

Did you know?

Long-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!

The 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"

La 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

Sergeant-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.

2020 - 2021 GLEN COVE GUIDE Page 29 about the City of Glen Cove

Gold Coast’s first golf course

In the 1890s, Arthur Sleigh of Glen Cove was on a business trip to London for the Duryea Starch Works. He met a Scot who invited him to Scotland and demonstrated the game of golf. On his return to the states, Sleigh introduced his friend Billy Hicks to the game and the two of them practiced the sport on empty lots around The Place. A third friend was introduced to the mysteries of golf, John Coles Tappan, and the three men soon created a 6-hole golf course in the Red Spring Area of Glen Cove, between Crescent Beach Road and Red Spring Lane. Their Queens County Golf Club opened in October 1895, and soon gained many members from the Red Spring and North Country Colonies. An additional three holes were soon added on the east side of Crescent Beach Road and the membership grew with the addition of other prominent Glen Cove residents. When 107 acres became available near Duck Pond Road, the club purchased them and created an 18-hole course and incorporated it as the Nassau Country Club in 1898. The name change was due to Nassau County being created out of Queens County on Jan. 1, 1899.

Appleby’s Grove Scout Camp

Within one year after the Boy Scouts of America were formed in 1910, the area behind the bluffs where the Garvies Point Museum is currently located, and was known as “Appleby’s Grove,” was used as a campground by the Boy Scouts. In 1915, through the generosity of the property owner, Charles Appleby, “Camp Coogan” was officially established as a Scout Camp for Boy Scouts from New York City's poor neighborhoods and was named for the scoutmaster of the troop that established the camp, the Rev. John J. Coogan. According to The New York Times, Coogan was the first Catholic priest in the United States to be commissioned as a scoutmaster in the BSA. Following World War I, a second Boy Scout camp, constructed by and for Glen Cove scouts was also located in “Appleby’s Grove.” In addition to tent sites, “Camp Gra-Mor,” as it was called, had buildings for a dining hall, kitchen and store room. Although the scout camps were long gone by the early 1960s, local Boy Scout troops still camped occasionally in “Appleby’s Grove,” until the property was sold to Nassau County as a preserve and museum.

That’s a ‘wrap’

The modern homemaker’s essential product, Reynolds Wrap, may have had its roots in Glen Cove.

F.W. Woolworth’s palatial estate, “Winfield Hall” on Crescent Beach Road, was sold by his heirs in 1929 to Richard S. Reynolds, the head of Reynolds Aluminum (technically, Reynolds Metals Company). Reynolds Aluminum began as the U.S. Foil Company in 1919 and supplied aluminum foil wrappers for cigarettes, Lifesavers candies and Eskimo Pies through the 1920s. When Reynolds purchased “Winfield Hall” in Glen Cove, he converted the estate garages to a research laboratory, where it is reported that the process for producing the company’s best-known aluminum foil product, Reynolds Wrap (which debuted in 1947), was first developed. Reynolds Metals was the second largest American aluminum company and the third largest in the world before it merged with ALCOA in 2000. “Winfield Hall” was sold by Reynolds Metals in 1969.