Health & Fitness
The Ecclesiastical History of the Levittown People
A look at the history of Levittown from a local historian.
The problem with dwelling in a secular society - from the historian's point-of-view - is that it, and its apocryphal interpretations, make it difficult to know what it was like to dwell in a sectarian society and, consequently, whence came the secular society in the first place.
Our community begins with the Great Puritan Migration (1622-50) and with Puritans who converted to Quakerism and settled on western Long Island whilst it was under the dominion of the more religiously tolerant Dutch West India Company: Captain John Seaman whose 1664 Jerusalem Purchase included Seaford, Wantagh, and southeastern Levittown; Robert Williams whose 1648 purchase now encompasses Hicksville and parts of Jericho, Syosset, and Woodbury; and Thomas Powell's Bethpage Purchase of 1690.
By the time Seaman died in 1695 at the age of 89, Quakers in our area went from discriminated-against minority following the takeover by the Duke of York in 1664, to the dominant denomination; a sect whose influence not only mitigated the political and religious conflicts during Dutch rule, the conquest under the Duke, and the crisis of 1775, but gave rise to the abolitionist movement. The preacher Elias Hicks, "the Prophet of Jericho", and Hicksville founder Valentine Hicks, were both active abolitionists instrumental in outlawing slavery in New York and the latter, as president of the Long Island Rail Road, did much to promote settlement of the Hempstead Plains between the Quaker settlements of Jericho and Jerusalem which now includes Hicksville, Levittown, and northern Wantagh.
Most of the newcomers in the 19th Century were Irish and German immigrants, both Roman Catholic and Lutheran, who were members of Hicksville's St. Ignatius (1859) and Trinity Lutheran (1853) congregations although in 1856 the German Methodist Episcopal Church (now called St. John's of Jerusalem because of a Lutheran congregation that operated there after 1926) was built on Wantagh Avenue and it has the distinction of being not only the first house-of-worship built in Levittown, but, indeed, Levittown's oldest extant building following the 1896 Garner house.
The first 20th Century congregation to become established in this area was St. Stephen's Lutheran Evangelical Church in 1910 which was formed by Lutherans seeking a more Americanized venue with services in English rather than in German.
The building of suburban Levittown between 1947 and 1951, created a demographic dynamic reflected in ecclesiastical institutions. Responding to an explosive population surge into the suburbs, the Roman Catholic Church created the Archdiocese of Rockville Centre out of the eastern two-thirds of the Archdiocese of Brooklyn, sold-off land to real estate developers (such as the site of Sears and the Broadway Mall in Hicksville), and established Hicksville's Holy Family (1951), Levittown's St. Bernard's (1947), Plainedge's St. James (1951), and Wantagh's St. Francis de Chantel (1952). In response, the Garden City-based Episcopal Diocese of Long Island created Hicksville's Holy Trinity (1950), Levittown's St. Francis of Assisi (1950), and Wantagh's St. Jude's (1956). Other denominations soon followed: Levittown Community Church (1950), Good Shepard Lutheran (1950), Levittown Baptist Church (1948), Levittown Christian Science Church (1950), and Levittown Presbyterian Church (1952).
In 1948, Levittown received its Jewish congregation at the Israel Community Center. By the 1960's, about one-third of Levittown was Roman Catholic, another third were Jewish, and another third were from various Protestant affiliations.
In recent years, reflecting both demographic shifts and the secularization of American society in general, some local congregations have merged. Levittown's St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church closed in 2004 and many of its congregants joined St. Jude's in Wantagh or Holy Trinity in Hicksville whilst the closing of the Israel Community Center in 2009 led to its merger with Wantagh's Temple B'nai Torah. And the Levittown Community Church, though it remains open, has joined with the Parkway Community Church in Hicksville.
Today Levittown has seven active churches; its most recent being the St. Thomas Malankara Orthodox Church at the North Village Green.
Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org
