Text size:

Garden City

Stewart's Ambitious Plan for the Plains

By Andrew Smith | Staff Writer

Thousands of years before tree-lined streets stretched past graceful, formal homes, the place that would become Garden City sat in the heart of the Hempstead Plains, the only prairie east of the Mississippi River.

It was a flat, barren meadow -- as clean a sheet of paper as any developer could hope for. No hills. No forest to clear or swamps to fill. In pre-colonial times, Indians lived on the shores, using the plains only for hunting. Then, for more than a century before Garden City was developed in the mid-1800s, the plains were public land in the Town of Hempstead, used as pastures available to all. Some of Long Island's first horse-racing tracks were laid out on the plains. Every so often in the years after 1850, town officials would try to put the 7,000 acres they controlled up for sale, but voters routinely vetoed the attempts.

Finally, in 1867, the sale narrowly won voters' approval, and two years later Charles Harvey agreed to buy the plains for $42 an acre. Harvey, one of the backers of New York City's elevated railways, was secretive about his plans for the Nassau land. Rumors spread that he would make the plains into an enormous cemetery, or build a jail. Enter wealthy New York merchant Alexander T. Stewart. He offered to pay an astounding $55 an acre - and promised to invest millions of dollars to build homes, roads and neighborhoods. It would be one of the nation's first planned communities.

Harvey desperately increased his bid to $56 an acre, but on July 17, 1869, Hempstead residents voted 1,077 to 52 in favor of Stewart's offer. Harvey threatened to sue, but in September Stewart received his deed for the plains for $395,328.35 in cash. The money paid for a new town hall, a poor house and other expenses.

Stewart and his architect, John Kellum, got to work laying out their new village, which Stewart named Garden City, after Chicago's informal nickname. Stewart liked the sound of it.

Much of 1870 was spent clearing and grading land and building an occasional house. The first one, a two-story cottage at 4 First St., was the headquarters for the enterprise. Workers erected 28 miles of white picket fence around the empty blocks, and Kellum had 6,500 sugar maple trees transplanted from Flushing. (The first house was razed in the 1960s, but the fence in front remains.)

In 1871, builder James L'Hommedieu of Great Neck won the first contract to build 20 ``fine villa residences'' in Garden City, priced between $2,000 and $20,000. Construction began the following year on the original Garden City Hotel. Despite the trappings of a fine village, residents were slow to arrive. They may have been put off by Stewart's insistence on retaining ownership of the entire village. He leased every house and every business to occupants. By the end of 1874, only 40 families had moved to Garden City. But Stewart persevered. He built a railroad to serve Garden City. He built a waterworks and the first sewage system in what was then Queens County. He built more stately houses.

And then he died, in April, 1876. His village was still a shell, with empty roads, saplings and empty houses. Residents began referring to the picket fences around empty lots as ``Stewart's ribs.'' Stewart's widow began work on a massive memorial to him - the magnificent Cathedral of the Incarnation. The Episcopal church was completed in 1885. Mrs. Stewart died the following year. There were no heirs.

Control of the village passed to the newly formed Garden City Corp., and in the 1890s, the village came to life. The company cleared away Stewart's ribs, encouraged renters to buy their homes and hired famed New York architect Stanford White to remodel the Garden City Hotel. It was an instant success. The hotel attracted the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Pierpont Morgans -- the richest citizens of the day. A golf course was similarly successful.

At the same time, the inability to attract land buyers prompted the Garden City Corp. in 1910 to sell 40 acres on Franklin Avenue to Doubleday, Page & Co. -- a rare invitation to industry from the planned community. Former President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone and the publishing plant's 700 employees soon were turning out 6,500 books a day. Doubleday dubbed it Country Life Press, a name that lives in a railroad station by that name. (The plant closed in 1988 and has since been converted to offices.)

The Army's use of the remaining plains as campgrounds during the Spanish-American War and World War I brought visitors to the hotel and village. And nearby Roosevelt and Curtiss airfields attracted aviators. Charles Lindbergh stayed at the hotel in the week before his flight to Paris in 1927.

In time, thanks both to the railroad and automobiles, Garden City finally began to fill up. It incorporated as a village in 1919, and its exclusive reputation led nearby communities to spring up and associate themselves with it, particularly Stewart Manor and Garden City Park. Adelphi College (later upgraded to university) moved from Brooklyn to Garden City in 1929, becoming the first four-year college in Nassau or Suffolk. And in the 1930s, hundreds of houses were built to accommodate a population boom, though Garden City used a strict zoning code to preserve Stewart's vision. Alone in central Nassau, the village retained a sense of orderly development, true to its rigorously planned roots.

Claims to Fame: The Episcopal cathedral and a more modern -- but less stylish -- version of the Garden City Hotel remain. The original headquarters building of the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway is now a private home near Clinton Road. The adjoining toll lodge was moved in 1989 to Seventh Street, east of Franklin Avenue, and is now the headquarters of the Garden City Chamber of Commerce. It includes a pictorial exhibit of the parkway. Homegrown Garden City celebrities include John Tesh, Susan Lucci and Telly Savalas.

Where to Find More: ``The Founding of Garden City,'' by Vincent Seyfried, and "The History of Garden City,'' by M.H. Smith, Garden City Public Library.