Hempstead Turnpike in 2010 with Loring Road on the left. Photo by Marilyn Monsrud Frese.
Click on pictures to enlarge
By PAUL MANTON
Levittown historian
The man in the photograph is a surveyor overseeing the site of the Wantagh Parkway crossing over Hempstead Turnpike. It was taken in May of 1936. There's another photo, taken on the same day with the same man, taken looking westwards into East Meadow wherein one can see the Berg farm at what's now the Newbridge Road/Hempstead Turnpike crossing. One of the Bergs wrote a memoir back in the 1970's about her life growing up on that farm in the 1920's and 1930's.
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ON A LIGHTER NOTE . . .
Forwarded by Warren Zaretsky
All the toilets in New York's police stations have been stolen. The police have nothing to go on.
A cartoonist was found dead in his home. Details are sketchy.
England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.
I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.
This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met herbivore.
I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.
"Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." "Where there's a will, I want to be in it," is a type of paraprosdokian.
1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.
3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
8. Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
10. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.
11. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.
12. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says, 'In case of emergency, notify:' I put 'DOCTOR.'
13. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
17. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
18. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
19. Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
20. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
21. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.
22. You're never too old to learn something stupid.
23. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
24. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
25. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
26. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
27. A diplomat is someone who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.
28. Hospitality is making your guests feel at home even when you wish they were.
29. I always take life with a grain of salt. Plus a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila.
30. When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.
1951-52 Mr. Thaler's 4th grade class NorthsideSchool class
Students were identified by Gary DeCastillia, a 1960 Division Avenue High School graduate
(rows go up and down, not side to side):
First Row - Dammie Zimmekma, Carolann Ritzer, Bonnie Lee
Second Row - Gary DeCastillia, Midge Rist, Diane White, Patricia Walsh, Louise Nicolosi
Third Row - Georgeann Post, Diane Brown, Pamela Gaines, Joyce Coleman, Nancy Stitt
Fourth Row - Dorothy Kuppler, Dave Cahn, Tommy Archibald, Damon Solomon
Standing - David Spencer, William Brown, Gregory Snaric, Mr. Thaler
Those who graduated in 1960 from Division were: Gary DeCastillia, Louise Nicolosi, Diane Brown (deceased), Dorothy Kuppler, Damon Solomon and Diane White.
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By DAVE CAHN
My family moved to Levittown on the first day it opened, October 1, 1947, which at that time was called Island Trees. The next month, my parents founded the Island Trees Eagle (in which they suggested the community be renamed "Levittown"), later the Levittown Eagle.
We moved to Wantagh at the end of April 1952, but I finished the year at Northside.
I posted the 1951-52 fourth-grade class picture to the Levittown Memorial High School Facebook group, in case some of the kids went there, rather than to DAHS. In my post there, I said, "When I moved to 36 Pinetree Lane, there were only a few blocks of houses built by Levitt and Sons (the tree section), no stores, and no schools, just the sound of thousands of hammers building the nearby flower section.
My parents sent me to a private kindergarten for 1947-48. The next year, I went to the newly erected Wisdom Lane quonset hut with Molly Alter as my first-grade teacher.
Nearly every year thereafter, sometimes twice a year, I moved to each new school (other than Abbey Lane) as it was built: Gardiners Avenue, Division Avenue (Elementary School), Summit Lane, and Northside."
What the 26 Haymaker Lane house looks like now, 52 years later.
Sandy in 1958 with a background of Levittown houses. She was 15.
Looking down Haymaker Lane from Blacksmith Lane corner.
Click on photos to enlarge
BY SANDRA KELLY MINCHER
Class of 1961
After renting on Cornflower (1951 or 1952) for a year, we bought the house at 34 Honeysuckle. I'm not sure of the dates, but around 1958 or 1959 we purchased 26 Haymaker Lane.
The photos here are of our house on Haymaker. A World War 2 veteran owns it now, according to Marilyn Monsrud Frese who took photos of the place on April 17. I spent most of my teen years here. Many fond memories were made during this time. After I graduated college I remained in Oswego to work and never returned home except to visit. My mother eventually moved to GreatRiver, LI.
My husband John and I went to see the house while we were in the area for my 25th Division Avenue reunion. At that time it had not changed much.
I love seeing the old houses compared to the remodeled versions.
Beth Cummings at age five in 1948, before her family moved to Levittown.
A recent photo of the house 34 Sandpiper Lane "on steroids".An older photo is not available.
Looking down Sandpiper Lane this month.
Click on pix to enlarge
Color photos by Marilyn Monsrud Frese
The blog series of stories with photos of early Levittown houses, shown with a recent shots of the same houses, has been well received. If only more people had old pictures of the homes they grew up in, the series could continue for months.
Old Levittowners enjoy the photos of the early houses, before there were so many improvements that you could not recognize what Levitt and Sons had built more than 60 years ago. However, I would have appreciated living in a house with more than one bathroom.
By BETH CUMMINGS
Class of 1960
I love these old photos that appear in the blog. It’s always a special treat to look at photos from the earliest days of Levittown, especially the ones showing the houses sitting on a sea of mud, the teensie-weenie baby trees (and dreaded sticker bushes) and the wooden boards we walked on till they were replaced by sidewalks. I always enjoy the old photos of the houses"before they were pumped up on steroids," to quote Frank Barning. Pumped up was the sad fate of our family’s poor little Levitt house.
Beginning in 1949, our family lived at 34 Sandpiper Lane. (Sandpiper was the short street that ran parallel to Redwing at the opposite end of RedwingPark). During the time our family owned the house, there was never any money for external improvements like a driveway and carport/garage, or expansion upward or outward.
Only absolutely necessary changes, driven by living space needs of our growing family, were made to the inside of the house: the kitchen was "squared off," and the attic was made into two bedrooms and the world’s tiniest powder room.
When my folks finally sold the house and moved to Florida, it looked pretty much the same as it always had. In fact, it had been so little improved over the years that the real estate people were stretched to the very limits of their creative writing skills as they tried desperately to craft a property description that would be attractive enough to pique potential buyers’ interest and yet sufficiently truthful to stop short of actual misrepresentation.
The notice they ended up publishing said – among other amusing things – that our house included "a lovely upstairs wrap-around bedroom" (because the chimney came up through it), and that the living room had "wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of a park" (that is, a panoramic view of weeds in Redwing Park). My father was delighted when he read the ad, and he joked, "Wow, this place sounds great – I’d like to live there."
Fast forward to the weekend of the 30th (or was it the 40th?)* Class of 1960 reunion, when my sister and I drove around Levittown to see our street and our old house. By that time, all the houses on our little street had been so "improved" that it was hard to identify them.
Worst of all, ours was completely unrecognizable. We had to check the house number on the curb before we’d believe it – there in front of us was this unbelievably tacky behemoth of a structure squatting all over the lawn we used to play on. The new owners had attached an enormous garage (with driveway to match), and the whole structure had been expanded in every possible direction, with its sides nearly reaching the next-door property lines, and a roof line whose height probably tests the outer limit of legality.
The construction looked really cheap, and we couldn’t believe this eyesore could possibly be in compliance with construction and zoning laws. Betcha Mr. Levitt would turn over in his grave if he could see it now.
I suppose it’s true what they say, that you can’t go back. But we can still "visit," courtesy of our old photos.
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* You know you’re getting old when you can’t tell decades apart.
