Kings Park

A Beacon for Those in Need

By Bill Bleyer | Staff Writer

Kings Park was a quiet farming community known as Indian Head until Episcopal priest William Augustus Muhlenberg came to town in 1869.

Muhlenberg, who had founded St. Luke's Hospital in New York City to help the underprivileged and handicapped, was about to realize his dream of an orphanage and home for the disabled and mentally ill in a rural setting.

After purchasing the 400-acre Smith Farm in northwestern Smithtown and later an adjacent 200 acres, he created the Society of St. Johnland to carry out his plans. The result was a self-sufficient community with a church, cottages, and homes for the crippled and elderly and for boys. Much of the acreage was farmed to supply food, and a typesetting facility was created to help residents generate additional income. This was augmented by gifts from benefactors including Cornelius Vanderbilt and his wife, who provided $20,000 plus $2,000 a year in maintenance for a home for orphaned girls. The community that developed around the complex initially shared the name St. Johnland.

Muhlenberg's complex was just the first of several major institutional and social experiments to find a home in the hamlet. In 1872 - the year the Long Island Rail Road arrived - officials in Brooklyn decided to purchase 870 acres adjoining Muhlenberg's tract. Over objections, in 1885 they established the Kings County Farm to provide for the care of the poor and the mentally ill. By 1892, there were four large buildings and 30 cottages, and there were cafeterias and heating and electric plants and a dairy to make the facility self-supporting.

In 1891, the railroad changed the name of its station from St. Johnland to Kings Park because of the Brooklyn connection. And in 1895 Dr. Oliver Dewing waged a successful campaign to have the Kings County farm converted into a state hospital for the mentally ill - the first such facility on Long Island. Five years later there were 2,697 patients attended by a staff of 454. This gave the hospital a larger population than the rest of the Town of Smithtown. At various times, nine of 10 residents worked at the hospital. Now all but a few hundred residential clients have been transferred to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood, and the Kings Park complex is up for sale by the state.

Other nonprofit groups followed Muhlenberg and the Kings County farm to the area. The Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Society bought two Smith family farms in 1905 to set up Indian Head Farm, a 500-acre tract where immigrant Romanian and Russian Jews would be taught farming skills. Kings Park was selected because of its flourishing Jewish community - it had one of the earliest synagogues on Long Island, built in 1908 by a congregation called Jewish Brotherhood of Kings Park. (The synagogue was destroyed by fire in 1962.) In the end, the immigrants were not interested in farming, so the experiment was abandoned.

In 1906, the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum, which had been founded in Brooklyn in 1866, purchased property in Saint James in an attempt to teach farming skills to blacks. In 1910, the group left Saint James and bought Indian Head Farm and changed the name to the Howard Orphanage and Industrial School. It closed in 1918 due to lack of funds.

``That seems to be the story of Kings Park,'' Smithtown Historical Society Director Louise Hall says of Kings Park's institutions and social experiments. ``The community grew up around the institutions and the employees settled there.''

Beginnings: Before white settlers arrived, Indians inhabited the area, probably using it as a wintering site. Remains of a 1,000-year-old Late Woodlands Period Indian long house were discovered in 1994 in the area of Indian Head Road. The first settlers were descendants of Smithtown founder Richard (Bull) Smith. Obediah Smith's home on St. Johnland Road - built around 1700 - is the oldest surviving house in the hamlet. The area remained open land and farms until the 1860s.

Claim to Fame: Besides the state hospital, the unincorporated hamlet is known for 1,266-acre Sunken Meadow State Park.

Brush With Disaster: On May 15, 1917, the ``Flats Fire'' broke out in the business district on the south side of Main Street in an area known as The Flats. Pushed by a strong breeze, the fire moved north and jumped Broadway. By the time it was extinguished, eight buildings were destroyed at a loss of more than $100,000. The result was the shifting of the business district farther to the west.

Where to Find More: ``Smithtown, New York 1660-1929,'' by Noel J. Gish, at Smithtown Public Library branches.