Gordon Heights

Built by Blacks, From the Ground Up

By Molly McCarthy | Staff Writer

A 1969 meeting at the community center in Gordon Heights, one of Long Island's -- and the nation's -- earliest developments marketed to blacks. (Newsday Photo)

In 1927, Louis Fife bought a parcel of land, sandwiched between Coram and Middle Island in the wilderness of Suffolk County, from ``Pop'' Gordon, who ran Gordon's Hotel. Fife then knocked on doors in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx, offering farmland to working-class black families for as little as $10 down and $10 a month. Borrowing Gordon's name, Fife called his company the Gordon Heights Development and Building Corp. It was one of Long Island - and the nation's - earliest housing developments marketed to blacks.

Two decades before Levittown, Gordon Heights was distinct from the postwar subdivisions that would rise to shelter returning veterans and their families. Fife's earliest advertisements characterized Gordon Heights more as a farming than a bedroom community. The homeowners in Gordon Heights weren't expected to commute daily to their city jobs. In fact, it took hours to get from Gordon Heights to the city by car in the early days. Less interested in the commuter, Fife, a white man who saw an untapped market in working-class blacks, targeted southern blacks or West Indian immigrants who had migrated to the city but longed to return to the land.

The families came, if somewhat slowly. Many bought land, waiting years to build their homes and move into them. For some, the delay resulted from their inability to get bank loans. Jobs tied others to the city, so they could get out to Gordon Heights only on weekends.

``My mother tended to be adventurous, and I think she began to tire of the city,'' said Ronald Armstrong, 66, whose father commuted into the city when the family, originally from Barbados, moved to Gordon Heights in 1937. ``It was sort of a new frontier.''

The fact that most homes were built piecemeal contributed to the sense of community in Gordon Heights. Long before Yvonne Rivers and her family moved into their home in 1947, her father trekked out on weekends to clear the land, burn tree stumps and gather the ash for their garden. ``Most put up homes one room at a time,'' Rivers recalled. At 18, she bought a one-acre plot behind the family homestead for $1,000.

Even though black families rejoiced at being able to build their own homes, the early years in Gordon Heights were hard. Parents sent children out to collect wood to heat their homes, and kerosene provided the only light. It would be the late 1940s before the homes got running water and electricity. Street lights would not arrive until 1969. Because they could not rely on neighboring communities for fire protection, Gordon Heights created its own volunteer fire department in 1947. It purchased two used fire trucks, and residents mixed sand, pumped water and carried bricks to help build the firehouse. In 1959, a credit union was founded so residents could get loans. Both enterprises continue to operate.

Armstrong recalled one snowy day in the early years when he and a few other kids missed the school bus. Instead of heading home, they walked several miles in knee-deep snow to Port Jefferson High School. They arrived three hours later and were scolded for their tardiness.

Still, Gordon Heights was a dream come true for many blacks. Yvonne Rivers was 6 years old when her mother left her with friends in Gordon Heights for a week-long visit in the summer of 1943. When Rivers got home to her family's Bronx apartment, she asked her mother, ``Can we move to the country?'' And Rivers kept asking until, in 1947, her parents scraped together $96 for the one-acre plot on which they erected a house sold as a kit at Gimbels.

``You're six years old, living in New York and can't get off your stoop and don't really know why,'' remembers Rivers, 60. ``I found it so enchanting to be able to open the door, get off the stoop, run across the street and never have to worry about cars or anything. It was such freedom.'' But she marveled at the sacrifices the early homeowners made. ``Who would leave running water, transportation, electricity ... Who would do this besides people who have a deep commitment to something?'' she said. ``They all came out for one reason. They wanted to build a community.''

Brush With Fame: Locked out of upstate resorts like the Catskills, black entertainers of the 1940s and '50s such as Ethel Waters and members of The Ink Spots vacationed in Gordon Heights. Prominent black leader Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1945, and Hazel Scott spent their honeymoon at a friend's home in Gordon Heights.