Hempstead Village

Why It's Called The Hub

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

It was called The Hub. Public transportation radiated from Hempstead Village like the spokes of a wheel. Pre-World War II homemakers would bus to Hempstead to shop. Everyone, in fact, shopped in Hempstead Village, the oldest community in Nassau County. While Mineola was the seat of county government, Hempstead was where you went for almost everything else.

To the English settlers in 1644, it was the place where several converging streams provided rich irrigated pasturage for cows and oxen. With a whole island to choose from, they settled in the spot where St. George's Church now stands, facing Front Street. Presbyterian followers of the Rev. Richard Denton, they built a meeting house to serve for both town meetings and religious services.

Historians differ on the derivation of the name. One version holds that it comes from the town of Hemel-Hempstead, birthplace of Robert Fordham, who first scouted the area with John Carman (probably his son-in-law, though this has not been proven). Other historians trace the name to the Dutch Heemstede, since the Dutch were there before the English.

The Dutch were at war with the Indians, and the first English settlers found themselves in a dangerous paradise. Seven Indians charged with stealing pigs in 1644 were confined in Fordham's cellar. New Netherlands Gov. William Kieft sent 120 soldiers, who dealt savagely with the native population.

All seems to have been peaceful by 1665 when the new English governor, Richard Nicolls, who had dislodged the Dutch the year before, called a convention in Hempstead, the largest and richest of the English settlements, according to historian Bernice Schultz Marshall. Delegates from all over Long Island and Westchester came expecting to write a new code of law but found themselves asked to rubber-stamp the Duke's Laws, already formulated by the duke of York, with no colonial input. Hempstead residents were among the most vocal protesters of ``taxation without representation.'' They were finally granted a colonial assembly in New York City in 1683, but the assembly attached the Town of Hempstead to Queens County, another cause of unrest during the next two centuries.

Though largely Tory during the Revolution - and suffering from both sides - Hempstead was visited by President George Washington on his tour of Long Island in 1790. He describes a stopover, probably for lunch at the Simmonson Inn, but says nothing of the devastation he must have seen after the seven-year British occupation.

The village, the largest community in the Town of Hempstead, was incorporated in 1853. Though it had a volunteer fire company since 1832, its bylaws required that any male resident who refused to help put out a fire would be fined $3. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Hempstead was the summer home of wealthy New Yorkers. The millionaire August Belmont had a country estate in the heart of the village. Journalist Arthur Brisbane's estate was just east. Elliott Roosevelt, a summer renter, brought his little daughter, Eleanor, who became first lady of the nation. William K. Vanderbilt II, founder of the Vanderbilt Cup races in 1904, drove the first motorcar into Hempstead at more than 6 miles an hour. The village board promptly set a speed limit at 6 miles.

In later years the country estates gave way to middle-income housing and shops, and the village became increasingly urbanized. Arnold Constable, the first New York department store to move to Long Island, located in Hempstead village in 1940. Other large stores followed. However, the tremendous building boom that followed World War II created giant shopping malls all over Long Island, and the major stores began moving out to where the money was.

But Hempstead remains a recognized name in education circles. Hofstra University, begun as a small commuter college in converted homes on Hempstead Turnpike in 1935, has grown to an internationally known university with an enrollment of more than 12,000 on a 238-acre campus.

With urbanization, meanwhile, the black population in the village increased rapidly in the second half of this century. The 1990 census listed more than 29,000 African Americans, making up roughly 60 percent of the total village population. About 9,000 residents were of Hispanic origin. The African-American Museum, opened by Nassau County in 1970 at 110 N. Franklin St., deals with the history and contributions of Long Island's African-Americans through films, lectures, programs and children's workshops.

Where to Find More: ``Colonial Hempstead,'' by Bernice Schultz Marshall; ``Vignettes of Hempstead Town,'' by Myron H. Luke; ``The Roots and Heritage of Hempstead Town,'' edited by Natalie A. Naylor, at the Hempstead Public Library and Long Island Studies Institute, Hofstra University, West Campus.