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Health & Fitness

The Little Things We've Lost

 "A monumental act of vandalism" was how the demolition of the old Pennsylvania Station was described by The New York Times. The majestic 1910 structure, estimated by its builders to last eight hundred years, was a distant memory by its centennial.

The "march of progress" has cost us not only many great things that bespoke our cultural, historical, religious, and scientific heritage but many little things as well - right here in our own little neck-of-the-woods. Here are three:     

The O'Hara House.
 Built around 1850 at the corner of North Broadway and East Carl Street in Hicksville, as the private residence of Irish immigrant John O'Hara, it was used to celebrate Hicksville's first Roman Catholic masses until St. Ignatius Church was completed sometime at the end of 1859 whereupon the Rev. Fr. Theodore Goetz took over from the visiting priests from St. Monica's parish in Jamaica. In 1994, the building was demolished and the land lay vacant until the creation of the Town of Oyster Bay Recreational Center.     

The Nicholi Street School.
 Fondly remembered by old Hicksville residents who saw it demolished in 1968 and the land later acquired by Trinity Lutheran Church for its playground, the imposing structure with its bell tower harked back to 1868 when it replaced the old one-roomed schoolhouse of fourteen years earlier. In 1897 and 1909, additions had been created and between 1926 and 1950, the building also housed the Hicksville Public Library.

Alas, its days as the epicenter of the Hicksville School District ended with massive schools built on Jerusalem Avenue (1925) and East Street (1927). The school, a product of Hicksville's rapid growth in the 19th Century and spread into the Island Trees area, became a victim of that growth in the 20th Century.    

The Island Trees Schoolhouse. Built on Hempstead Turnpike approximately where DSW shoes is currently located, and where Toys R Us had been before that, this rural schoolhouse opened its doors two years after the Island Trees School District began in 1902 and it served the elementary school grades wherefrom graduates completed their educations in either Hempstead, Hicksville, or Farmingdale.

This building, like the district itself, reflected the growth of the Island Trees area at the end of the 19th Century when the railroad brought increasing numbers of potato farmers. Rendered obsolete in 1950 by the explosive growth of the Levitt Development, it was, sadly, destroyed by a fire three years later. Most poignant is a time capsule - a message in a wine bottle left to posterity by the students of Mr. Peake's class and unearthed in 1971 as the land was being cleared to make way for Nassau Mall.

Amongst the students was Frank Stokes and Birdsall Sparke whose families would modernize education in the district and, true to the inspirational Latin message, "we shall be immortal", came to be remembered in the J. Fred Sparke and Michael F. Stokes elementary schools.    

Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org

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