Levittown's First Roads

In colonial times it was not unusual for roads in our area to be named according to the settlements they linked.

For example, Hempstead Turnpike is still officially called the "Hempstead-Bethpage Turnpike" even though it came to extend beyond those points. The "turnpike" suffix was added in the mid-nineteenth century, when it briefly functioned as a toll road with tolls being collected somewhere near what's now Gardiners Avenue.

Another example is on a map created in 1745, when Samuel Willis resurveyed the old Robert Williams's Indian purchase of 1648 (which included present-day Hicksville). On this map is a road called "Highway from Huntington to Hempstead." Today, it's Woodbury Road and terminates at East Barclay Street in Hicksville, but in the mid-eighteenth century it continued for several miles southwest, across the Hempstead Plains (through what's now part of Hicksville and East Meadow) and thence to Hempstead Village.

It's difficult to say why this section failed to survive as a modern road but it probably had something to do with the arrival of the Long Island Rail Road in 1837 and Valentine Hicks' parceling-off of land twelve years later to Frederick Heyne and John Heitz.   

The names of these old highways could be cumbersome and as time went by they were abbreviated for convenience and to avoid confusion. Consider that in the 19th Century there were three roads in the Jerusalem/Island Trees area (now south Levittown and north Wantagh) that had the word "Jerusalem" in their names. Two survive as east-to-west running Jerusalem Avenue and North (Old) Jerusalem Road. The third is now the north-south Jerusalem Avenue that runs from Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown to Hicksville, where it merges into North Broadway just a block north of the LIRR tracks. It had originally been called the "Highway from Jericho to Jerusalem" on the Willis Map and linked the two Quaker settlements where Hicksville and Island Trees would emerge in the 19th Century.

Sometime around 1915, the section of this road south of Hempstead Turnpike was renamed "Gardiners Avenue" due to a misspelling of "Garner". To avoid confusing the growing motoring public, this section of Jerusalem Avenue was named after the Garners who, by the time the current farmhouse was built by William Garner in 1896, owned property on both sides of the road, encompassing what's now the grounds of Abbey Lane and Gardiners Avenue Schools and some of the adjacent residential streets.   

Just a few years before the name change, a section of Newbridge Road between Hempstead Turnpike and Old Country Road was called "Lincoln Avenue." Old Country Road in Hicksville is listed as "Manetta Hill Avenue" and "Manetto Hill Avenue" on the 1906 Clancy Map, and the "Hempstead" moniker re-emerged after our section of Hempstead Turnpike had been called "South Post Road".

Cartographers in olden times took liberties in endowing their maps with the air of officialdom, and many of these highly individualistic and idiosyncratic endowments subsequently became recognized by civil authorities.  

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