Levittown, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

Before 1947 the area that became Levittown held two settlements, Jerusalem and Island Trees.^[1] The Levittown Public Library's history collection, citing the Levittown Historical Society, dates Jerusalem to the 1640s and describes it as a Quaker settlement centered on what are now Wantagh Avenue and the Southern State Parkway.^[1] The society's president has traced the Jerusalem name to a 1664 "Jerusalem Purchase" between John Seaman and Takapausha, whom he identifies with the Massapequa, and the Island Trees name to a 1747 land deed that mentions an "Island of Trees", a grove of pitch pines at the northeast corner of Hempstead Turnpike and Jerusalem Avenue on the otherwise open Hempstead Plains.^[4] The two accounts differ on when Jerusalem began (1640s against a 1664 purchase), and neither page reproduces the underlying deeds.^[1][4]

The land lies in the Town of Hempstead, whose founding deed was negotiated on December 13, 1643, between the English emissaries Robert Fordham and John Carman and representatives the Town's archives name as the Reuckowacky, the Merockes, Matinecock and Massapequas.^[5] The Town's own history notes that the deed specified neither boundaries nor compensation, that the Dutch patent followed in November 1644, and that the deed was not confirmed until July 4, 1657.^[5]

After the Civil War, German immigrant families coming from Hicksville established farms along Hempstead Turnpike, Division Avenue and Bloomingdale Road in the area known since colonial times as Island Trees.^[1] A Jerusalem school district founded in 1814 became the nucleus of the later Levittown district, and a separate Island Trees School District was established in 1902, with a schoolhouse built on Hempstead Turnpike the following year.^[4] Three rural airfields operated in the area before World War II; the largest, the Long Island Aviation Country Club, ran from 1929 to 1950.^[1]

An outbreak of the golden nematode, a potato pest, in the early 1940s prompted many local farmers to sell their fields to William Levitt.^[1] According to the library's chronology, the first sale of at least 350 units was announced on March 7, 1947, and building began on May 7, 1947, on an original tract of 500 acres bounded by Hempstead Turnpike, Bellmore Road, Jerusalem Avenue and the old Motor Parkway.^[2][1] Small crews moved from lot to lot, each performing one of 27 steps, a method the library, citing Time magazine of July 3, 1950, calls a "reverse assembly line"; output rose from 18 houses a day in 1947 to 30 a day by July 1948.^[2]

The first 300 families moved in on October 1, 1947, at an original rent of $60 a month.^[2] The Island Trees place-name gave way on January 1, 1948, when the area officially became part of Levittown.^[4] The project ended on November 21, 1951, with 17,447 Levitt houses built, along with seven "Village Green" shopping centers and nine swimming pools.^[2] The Town of Hempstead, which cites Levittown as one example of its postwar growth, went from just over 265,000 residents in 1940 to 448,000 in 1950.^[5]

A Levittown Fire District was approved by the Town of Hempstead and the state in 1950, and its volunteer department went into full operation on January 1, 1951.^[29]

How the roads got here

Hempstead Turnpike, the hamlet's main east-west road, is part of New York State Route 24: the state Department of Transportation's official route description carries NY 24 "east on Hempstead Turnpike to East Meadow, Levittown, Farmingdale".^[13] West of Levittown the road began as a private toll road; a Herald history column records that the Hempstead Turnpike Company was established in March 1812 to run a turnpike between Jamaica and Hempstead, that the road was sold in 1852 to the Hempstead and Jamaica Plank Road Company, and that it appears to have been public again by 1891.^[15] That column does not document the segment east of Hempstead village that now crosses Levittown.^[15]

William K. Vanderbilt II's Long Island Motor Parkway, described by the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum's collection as one of the first roadways in the United States built exclusively for motor vehicles, opened its first section in 1908 and operated as a private toll road until 1938.^[14] The parkway was one of the four boundaries of Levitt's original 500-acre tract.^[1] The Levittown library's chronology states that Vanderbilt Cup races were held over the future Levittown between 1908 and 1910 before crowds it puts at 250,000, and that Division Avenue ran north all the way to Old Country Road until 1908.^[3]

Two state parkways frame the community in the Nassau County Police Department's description of the precinct that covers it: north of the Southern State Parkway and east of the Wantagh State Parkway.^[17] NYSDOT lists both parkways under the jurisdiction of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, with the notation that they are maintained and signed by NYSDOT.^[13]

Hempstead Turnpike's pedestrian-safety record has drawn regional attention: in February 2012 Patch reported that the Tri-State Transportation Campaign had for three years ranked Hempstead Turnpike in Nassau County the most dangerous road in the tri-state region for pedestrians, and that a Newsday analysis of 2005-2010 crash reports found pedestrians were killed on the 16 Nassau miles of Route 24 more than five times a year on average.^[16] The same report recorded the Levittown Property Owners Association pressing NYSDOT's regional director over crossing time at Gardiners Avenue and Hempstead Turnpike.^[16]

Law and legal history

Leases for Levitt houses, and later deeds, carried a racial restriction numbered clause 25, under which the tenant agreed "not to permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race".^[6] The Federal Housing Administration, which insured the mortgages, recommended restrictive covenants in the deeds of homes it insured.^[7] On May 3, 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, that state courts deny equal protection when they enforce racially restrictive covenants, while adding that such agreements "standing alone" do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they are carried out by voluntary adherence.^[8] Exclusion in Levittown continued after the ruling: a Long Island Press history column drawing on Newsday's reporting describes a Black family who sublet a Levittown house, were refused a renewal or sale by the landlord in 1953 and were evicted that December, and who later bought a neighboring house through a white intermediary.^[7]

Levittown generated litigation before its first tenants arrived.^[12][2] In Matter of Levitt & Sons, Inc. v. Young, 189 Misc. 922 (Sup. Ct. Nassau County, August 14, 1947), the company, then owner of about 425 acres "at Island Trees, near Hicksville", asked the court to order the Town of Hempstead's chief building inspector to approve 5/16-inch plywood wall sheathing in place of the three-quarter-inch lumber the town building code required.^[12] Justice Froessel dismissed the proceeding, reasoning that the choice of construction standards was a legislative question for the town and that mandamus issues only to enforce a clear legal right.^[12] The library's chronology separately records that local rules were changed on May 27, 1947, to accommodate cellarless homes.^[2]

The Island Trees Union Free School District, whose offices are on Farmedge Road in Levittown, gave its name to the U.S. Supreme Court's principal school-library decision.^[28][9] In February 1976 the district's board directed that books it characterized as "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy" be taken out of the high school and junior high school libraries, and students sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.^[9] In Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, decided June 25, 1982, the Court affirmed the Second Circuit's order sending the case to trial; Justice Brennan's plurality opinion stated that school boards may not remove library books "simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books".^[9]

The neighboring Levittown Union Free School District is the first-named plaintiff in Board of Education, Levittown Union Free School District v. Nyquist, 57 N.Y.2d 27, decided by the New York Court of Appeals on June 23, 1982.^[10] The action had been started in 1974 by the boards of 27 school districts and 12 students, and a trial court had declared the state's school-finance system unconstitutional; the Court of Appeals held that the system violated neither the federal nor the state equal protection clause nor the education article of the State Constitution, which it read as guaranteeing "a sound basic education".^[10]

A crash on Hempstead Turnpike produced a Court of Appeals ruling on criminal procedure.^[11] On the evening of January 31, 1983, two eastbound cars that prosecutors said were racing struck a vehicle turning left from Hempstead Turnpike into Silver Lane, killing its driver; eyewitnesses estimated the cars' speed at 60 to 90 miles per hour.^[11] Because a statement by one defendant could not be used against the other, the trial judge tried the two together before two separate juries.^[11] In People v. Ricardo B., 73 N.Y.2d 228 (1989), the Court of Appeals upheld that procedure, which it called "novel", while warning that "multiple juries are the exception, not the rule", and found the evidence sufficient to support a verdict of criminally negligent homicide.^[11]

Government, courts and policing

The library's chronology describes Levittown as an "unincorporated area"; the Town of Hempstead counts 34 unincorporated areas alongside its 22 incorporated villages.^[2][5] Two school districts, Levittown and Island Trees, and two public libraries of the same names divide the community.^[4]

The Nassau County Police Department patrols the hamlet through its Eighth Precinct, whose published list of communities includes Levittown.^[17] The precinct station is at 299 Hicksville Road, Bethpage.^[18] Nassau County reopened the Eighth Precinct on April 10, 2019, seven years after it had been closed.^[19]

Criminal charges and smaller civil claims from Levittown go to the Nassau County District Court at 99 Main Street, Hempstead, which the state court system describes as deciding civil suits up to $15,000, handling misdemeanors and lesser offenses, and arraigning defendants accused of felonies.^[23] Nassau County also operates a Traffic & Parking Violations Agency at 801 Axinn Avenue, Garden City, whose stated mission is the adjudication of traffic, parking and photo-enforcement offenses.^[25] Larger civil cases are heard in Nassau County Supreme Court at 100 Supreme Court Drive, Mineola; outside New York City, the court system notes, Supreme Court hears civil matters while County Court hears criminal ones.^[24]

Of the hamlet's main roads, Hempstead Turnpike is a state touring route (NY 24) and the Southern State and Wantagh State parkways are state parkways maintained by NYSDOT.^[13]

Railroad and transit

The Long Island Rail Road reached neighboring Hicksville in 1837.^[4] From 1871 until the 1930s the railroad's Central Branch, known as the Stewart Line, ran through the future Levittown carrying passengers, livestock and seed potatoes, and in 1948 William Levitt reconstructed sections of the line in East Meadow to bring in building materials.^[3]