Early Businessmen in Levittown

The arrival of Robert Moses' Wantagh State Parkway to Hempstead Turnpike in 1936 was immediately seen as an exceptional business opportunity.

The first to take advantage of this venue of greater accessibility for the motoring public was Herbert Gould, a real-estate speculator who purchased land north of the Turnpike and just east of North Bellmore Road and erected a dozen houses on Wolcott, Loring, and North Bellmore roads. He called his country-homes-for-the-weekend-business-class Green Acres and had plans in the offing for the windswept meadows on the west side of Division Avenue, across the street from the Kiessel and Seligman farmsteads that are now encompassed by the Tri-County Flea Market shopping center and the grounds of Division Avenue and Wisdom Lane schools. Alas, the economy of the Great Depression got the better of him and Green Acres folded. His sales office, later fondly remembered as the site of a Carvel Ice Cream store and sheltered bus stop, was taken over by Bill Grac.    

Grac's Green Acres Nursery's greenhouses and outdoor facilities ran from Wolcott to his house where the Amaco gas station is today. Across the street - where Baby Boomers now recollect dining at Caruso's, buying tropical fish at Pet Paradise Aquarium, and still get their arrangements at Flowers by Phil - was Rollin's Dog Kennels. Behind that, the Nassau Trapshooter's Club was a magnet for local sportsmen and is now just a faded memory enshrined in Target, Shotgun, and Gun lanes.    

In the Roaring Twenties, Bill Zwickert lived in the old Dutch Colonial-style Robricht farmhouse whilst running an automobile repair shop and Hudson-Essex dealership out of a wooden mess hall originally used for the dough boys in Garden City. He sold the property to Gee and Betty Braman around 1930 and it, and the empty fields behind it, became Nassau Airport. In 1947, the Catholic Church bought the hanger building and Robricht house and converted the former into worship space whilst the latter became the rectory building. As Msr. Thomas O'Brien was celebrating Mass with the new congregants of St. Bernard's Church, the Kiessel farmhouse across the way was slated for removal to build May's Department Store.    

A little ways down the Turnpike, past the Gulf station that had been Island Trees' only gas station, past the ancient grove of pine trees that would make way for Henshaw's Furniture Store (now the site of Friendly's), and beyond the 1902 Island Trees schoolhouse, the LWF Engineering Company's little rural airfield operated. It belonged to three businessmen - Edward Lowe, Charles Willard, and Robert Fowler. The last was the first man to fly across the U.S. from west-to-east.    

One of the most prominent businessmen in early Levittown was George Hubbell. His career spanned more than three decades as chief representative of the Merillon Estate Company which owned most of the land in Island Trees between 1893 and 1947. Collecting rent from farms and airport operators and overseeing acreage sales, it was Hubbell who was charged with selling additional unimproved land when Herbert Gould went out of business. And in 1943, hoping to find a buyer with a better track record and better prospects, he approached an up-and-coming Manhassett-based real estate company: Levitt & Sons.    

The Levitt Development was a boom for many. Tens of thousands of new residents translated into new customers for retailers, new readers for newspapers, new congregants for churches, and new voters for public office-seekers. As much as all these interests fostered the growth of Levittown after WWII, it's worth recalling the businessmen who made the Island Trees area attractive to Levitt & Sons in the first place.   

Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org