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Lawrence

Always a Bastion of Quiet Elegance

By Tom Morris | Staff Writer

One of Long Island's showcase communities, and the most populous of the Five Towns area's six villages, Lawrence has been a bastion of quiet wealth and architectural elegance since its founding in the late 1800s.

Rock Hall, a splendid Georgian mansion built in 1767 as a plantation, is a Hempstead Town museum in the heart of the village, featuring Chippendale furniture and hand-planed walls. The sprawling Rockaway Hunting Club has for 120 years been a citadel of deep-rooted, deep-pocketed American families who have survived the generations with fox hunts, steeplechase, polo and, in later years, golf, tennis and skeet shooting.

Lawrence has been called home by the likes of Edward H. Harriman, owner of the New York Central Railroad, banking titan Russell Sage, U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham (under President William Howard Taft) and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (under President Franklin D. Roosevelt). Summer residents have ranged from the irascible Irish author Oscar Wilde to American funnyman Milton Berle.

Before the Civil War, New York City investors Alfred N. Lawrence and his brother Newbold began buying up farms that traced back to the ownership of Jacob Hicks in 1659. Right after the war, in 1869, the South Side Rail Road arrived in the area. Lawrence appeared on its first timetable that June. The following year, the Lawrences donated land for a rail depot and pressed their aim of making Lawrence a summer resort for the rich.

It came almost naturally because of the huge popularity of the nearby Rockaway area among well-heeled New York City people earlier in the 1800s, and their tendency to seek new venues when masses of working immigrants discovered the same seaside delights.

Lawrence became the Five Towns' first incorporated village in 1897, at the height of its heyday as an opulent resort. The snooty Osborne House opened in 1884 in the Isle of Wight section of south Lawrence. The same year, the Rockaway Hunt Club, which had originated four miles west in Far Rockaway, had an ``ing'' added and was moved to Lawrence. By 1886, as the gilded age evolved, there were about 100 mansions in Lawrence, but the post-War War II building boom in Lawrence and Cedarhurst consumed many of the estates, as well as large tracts of woods, meadows and marsh.

Lawrence has been tightly run since the incorporation 101 years ago by leading residents, many of whom have been lawyers, businessmen, engineers and other professionals. Up to the mid-1960s, only landowners could vote in village elections. Today, the 4.5-square-mile village of 6,500 residents is a mixture of old and new architectural influences - Georgian, Edwardian, French Provincial, Tudor and contemporary. Among famous architects who have left their work are Marcel Breuer and Stanford White.

Where to Find More: ``Village of Lawrence, N.Y., a Brief History of a Long Island Community,'' 1977, by the Village of Lawrence, at Peninsula Public Library, Lawrence.