FITZMAURICE FLYING FIELD

I'm back from vacation (Ireland is a splendid place to visit) and am ready to tour the rest of the Massapequas via the Historical Society's markers. Previous blogs have described markers along Merrick Road. We'll now travel north of Sunrise Highway, the area that was settled beginning in the mid 19th century and changed radically after World War II, a condition many long time residents can acknowledge.

Perhaps the most unique feature of the Massapequas was an airport that existed in today's Massapequa Park from 1929 to 1953. The airport was opened in conjunction with houses that were built by the firm of Brady, Cryan and Colleran (hereafter BCC), three Irish lawyers who saw the area north and south of Sunrise Highway as ripe for development. It helped that they were informed by Alfred E. Smith, their fellow Irishman and New York's Governor, that Robert Moses was planning to build a highway just north of the area (the Southern State Parkway) and a highway linking eastern Nassau County to the Wantagh Parkway, allowing easy access to Jones Beach. The parkway running to the Wantagh never materialized, but Brady, Cryan and Colleran had begun their sales pitch by 1927, highlighting their plan to open an airport in the middle of what was Stadt Wurtemberg, the area north of Sunrise Highway settled by Germans in the 1860s. By the twenties, the area was still sparsely settled and the developers capitalized on anti-German sentiment from World War I, as well as their Irish background, to attract many customers from New York City.

As streets were laid out and houses were built, BCC settled on a location for their airfield, relying heavily on the recommendations of famous aviatrix Elinor Smith, a Freeport resident,  who selected the area bounded by Second Avenue on the east, Roosevelt Avenue on the west, Spruce Street on the north and Smith Street on the south. The 21 acre field had two runways, the longer 1800 feet in length, which made it one of the smallest fields on Long Island. That didn't seem to bother BCC because they touted the advantage of having an airfield for the use of residents, who would apparently be wealthy enough to own a plane and could use it to go to work anywhere in the New York area or for recreational purposes. They advertised heavily in Irish neighborhoods in The Bronx and Brooklyn and even provided free train service from Penn Station for prospective buyers.

The field was opened in May 1929 to great fanfare. A large crowd was present (estimates are as high as 100,000, but that seems overly optimistic), partly to see famed contemporary aviators, including Clarence Chamberlain, Bert Acosta, Thea Rasche, Elinor Smith, and James Fitzmaurice, after whom the field was named. Fitzmaurice had achieved fame as the commander of the Irish Air Corps after World War I and as one of the three-man crew that crossed the Atlantic from east to west in 1928, the first to perform that arduous feat. (Lindbergh had crossed from Roosevelt Field to Paris in 1927. His flight was aided by a tailwind. Fitzmaurice and his crew had to fight headwinds going east to west and ended up on Greenly Island in Labrador, flying from Baldonnel Airfield in Ireland.)

Timing is everything and Fitzmaurice Flying Field never became as busy as expected. Neither did the area that became Massapequa Park, because of the Great Depression. When the stock market crashed in October 1931 (six months after the founding of Massapequa Park), many prospective buyers turned their backs on homes offered by BCC. Those who had bought homes found they were unable to meet their mortgage obligations, either because they had lost money on their investments, or because they had lost their jobs. Mention should be made that BCC took advantage of many of their customers, convincing them to modify their mortgages in ways that enabled them to foreclose or to buy the properties at very low prices. Subsequent investigations found the firm guilty of defrauding home buyers, with the result that Cryan was found guilty of fraud and lost his real estate license and Colleran was forced to resign as Massapequa Park's Mayor. Michael Brady came out unscathed, because he had stayed in New York City, running the company's business from their offices. He eventually became Massapequa Park's Chief Judge and retired in 1965 with his reputation intact.

Fitzmaurice Flying Field morphed into a place where flyers stored their planes and where youngsters learned to fly. Tom Murphy became its manager in the late 1930s and ran the field as a training facility and a base for a skywriting company. By 1950 new houses sprang up in the area surrounding the field, prompting concerns about safety. The School Board also needed to build schools and the Field was a perfect location. Murphy sold the property in 1953 for $600,000. The hangars and related structures were demolished and Hawthorn School was built on the southern part in 1954. It became the Nassau County Police Training Academy recently. McKenna School was built near Spruce Street in 1958, completing the transformation of a unique part of our local history.

The Historical Society of the Massapequas highlighted Fitzmaurice Flying Field's importance by erecting a marker on Spruce Street, just east of Roosevelt Avenue, in 1995. William Elio was Society President and arranged for the dedication.