Ferretti's portraits of Hempstead
Framed portraits of Hempstead Town Supervisor John Ferretti and some past supervisors in Town Hall. Credit: Provided to The Point
Daily Point
Ferretti's wall of fame
The Point has a quiz for you.
The above photo includes a historical lineup of the Town of Hempstead's presiding supervisors. It's a display found in the supervisor's conference room in Town Hall. A source shared it with The Point last month.
In the middle is a color photo of current Supervisor John Ferretti. He's surrounded by smaller, black and white pictures of many of his predecessors. You may recognize Alfonse D'Amato, Joseph Mondello, Thomas Gulotta and Gregory Peterson to the left of Ferretti. To the right is Richard Guardino, Kate Murray, Anthony Santino and Don Clavin, previous supervisors all.
It's a walk down memory lane, a fascinating who's who of some of the most powerful individuals in Hempstead — and Nassau County — politics, although it doesn't encompass familiar pre-D'Amato names such as Francis Purcell and Ralph Caso, both of whom went on to be Nassau County executives.
Now, the quiz.
Who's missing?
Perhaps it's a chapter Republicans in Hempstead would prefer to forget.
Democrat Laura Gillen was elected as town supervisor nine years ago, when she defeated Santino. She served as the town's first and only non-Republican supervisor in 2018 and 2019, when she lost her reelection bid to Clavin.
But Gillen's photo did not make Ferretti's wall.
"This is childish, but it's not surprising that they wanted to ignore the fact that Laura was the first Democratic supervisor in over 100 years and has gone on to higher office," a Gillen spokesman said.
Sources told The Point that when Gillen was supervisor, she gathered photos of past supervisors to emphasize the town's history, hoping they'd be displayed publicly.
The Point inquired as to why the Democrat isn't included in a Town Hall photo spread of supervisors past and present. Hempstead spokesman Brian Devine did not return requests for comment.
— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com
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Reference Point
In search of tomorrow, six decades ago
The Newsday editorial from Sept. 30, 1967. Credit: Newsday archives
This week 59 years ago, Long Island made an "internationally prominent" hire for an assignment that demanded "the best."
International architect and urban planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis was retained by the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board to "lend his vision to the task of preparing Long Island for a better future."
"The planning board has chosen an outstanding man," Newsday's editorial said of Doxiadis, who led Greece's Ministry of Reconstruction after World War II, designed the grid-based master plan for Islamabad in Pakistan in the 1960s, and became known as the father of ekistics, the science of human settlements. "His assignment has been described by the board as a conceptional one; he is to point the way."
Doxiadis was part of a team being assembled in 1967 to develop a master plan for all of Long Island, that included land-use and transportation components, in response to rapid growth the suburb was experiencing.
"Suffolk County has already passed the 1,000,000 mark in population; Nassau is now running close to 1,500,000," the board wrote. "The addition of high-speed commuter trains to the Long Island Rail Road will produce a further surge in growth, especially in Suffolk, where County Executive Dennison has estimated a doubling of the population by 1982. This growth can be channeled to make Long Island an even better place in which to work live; this is what the master plan is all about."
During his consulting work over the next year, Doxiadis set 4.5 million as the probable two-county Long Island population by the year 2000 — 2.6 million in Suffolk, and 1.9 million in Nassau. That turned out to be on the high side. The study also said the population increase would mean building 45 cities of 50,000 persons each. He did, however, hedge this prediction on no zoning restrictions being put in place that would stifle growth ... which is exactly what happened.
Local governments across the Island stepped in to preserve open land and rezoned many areas to require bigger lots, Newsday wrote in 1999 as part of the "Long Island, Our Future" project. In Southampton Doxiasis projected in 1968 there was enough land to house 264,000 residents by the year 2000, an eightfold increase. Instead, it grew to just 47,000 at the start of the 21st century.
Ultimately, the Regional Planning Board used the study by Doxiasis that focused on Long Island's development and others on housing to build a comprehensive master plan that was released in 1970. Already by 1973, the Regional Planning Board lowered Doxiasis' projection to 3.55 million by 2000 in response to the zoning restrictions and falling birth rates. Today in 2026, Long Island's population sits at 2.9 million residents.
— Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com
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