THEN AND NOW: The Landry residence at 9 Loring Road in Levittown

9 Loring Road in 1973. Roberta Landry's non-Levitt & Sons house. Her family moved there in 1950.

The house in 2012. Roberta's parents sold it in 1976 and moved to Florida.

Levittown's Loring Road in 2012. Notice that there are still no sidewalks.

Click on photos to enlarge

By ROBERTA LANDRY

DAHS Class of 1961

It's been many years since I've been to the house at 9 Loring Road. The house I grew up in actually stayed pretty much unchanged for quite awhile after my parents sold it in 1976 and moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. I don't think it changed until around 2009.

The only photos of the changes I had seen were on the Nassau County Land Records site and they certainly didn't show me as much as Marilyn Monsrud Frese's photos shown here.

Among the other Division Avenue High School students who lived on our part of Loring between Sherwood Road and Hempstead Turnpike were Dotty Scagliola and Kathy Ryan (class of 1962), and Terry Ripino (1960). We were only a few blocks from the North Village Green.

Ours was not a Levitt house. My parents bought a lot on Loring Road and had a house built which we moved into in 1950. I assume Levitt didn't buy the Loring Road area as there were only a few empty lots. It was an already established road with a number of houses that were built pre-World War 2.

My father and brother Joe (Levittown Memorial class of 1957) did some work finishing the house - shingles, cement walks and driveway. I was told my job was to pick up the nails they dropped, but I really don't remember it. Water was from a well and there were no sewers on Loring Road. Levitt houses back then had cesspools, as we did as well. Later, my father and brother sank a new well in our basement. My brother thinks it was about 15- feet deep (from the basement floor). My drilled well here in Guilford, Vermont is down 445 feet.

Telephone was initially a two-party line. There were no sidewalks or street lights. I see from Marilyn's photos that there are still no sidewalks but I do see a few street lights. There was a Bohack super market around the corner on Hempstead Turnpike. There was also a candy/soda store where I remember going with Dotty Scagliola and buying things for our doll houses or toys or comics. Our lot was a half acre and we had a huge garden in the back yard.

The black and white photo shown above was probably taken around 1973. My brother also pointed out that back then we didn't even have curbs along the street.

Color photos taken by Marilyn Monsrud Frese in late March 2012.