Health & Fitness
When Technology Came to Town
A look at the history of Levittown from a local historian.
Remember the contents of the first e-mail you ever sent? I do. It was in January of 2001 - the dawn of a new century being an irony not lost on me - and, in Old English Gothic font, it read "Greetings and felicitations! Hip, Hip, Hip Hurrah!...Tally Ho!" - a Star Trek reference to a fellow fan. It was not exactly Samuel Morse's "What hath God wrought" that ushered in the era of electronic communications on May 24, 1837 but it noted that I'd personally entered the Cyber Age.
The arrival of new technologies has frequently been one of awe-inspiration, occasional fanfare, and frequent ballyhoo. Levittown's first telephone call, a conversation between Theodore Bladykus whose family became the first to move into a brand-new Levitt & Sons home on October 1, 1947, and Herb Kastberg, president of the Island Trees Community Association calling from London occurred in May of 1948. But electronic communications around here harks back to December of 1875 with the establishment of a telegraph station along the now-defunct Stewart Line of the LIRR near the present-day intersection of Jerusalem Avenue and Mallard Lane. The aforesaid rail line arrived in the Island Trees/Jerusalem area on May 26, 1873 with stops at Newbridge Road, Jerusalem Avenue, and Hicksville Road. By then, however, the iron horse was old hat: the LIRR reached Ridgewood Station (Wantagh) in 1869 and Hicksville in 1837.
Nobody can say when the first aircraft appeared overhead in our skies but we can guess that with the Curtis Aircraft Factory opening up in Garden City in 1909 - the first aircraft factory in the U.S. - that there was ensuing air traffic. By 1930 there were three rural airfields operating here in Levittown: Nassau Airport (between Center and Roxbury along Hempstead Turnpike), L.W.F. Field (at Hempstead Turnpike and Hicksville Road), and the Aviation Country Club ('round Blacksmith Road).
Automobile traffic likewise turned heads in the rural community at the turn-of-the-century but the first recorded one was probably on October 24, 1908 when thousands huddled about the sidelines and filled the Grandstand and Review Stand at what'd become Skimmer and Orchid to watch George Robertson win the Vanderbilt Cup Race.
Other contrivances, machines, gadgets, devices, and innovations made their appearance in the years that followed. The Bendix washing machines, GE automatic oil burner, GE refrigerator, copper coil heating system, and Admiral TV set might not seem like Space Age technology to us today, but when they came standard in Levitt & Sons homes, it was quite a breakthrough.
Does technology still inspire awe? I doubt it. A couple of years ago, I sat in a Laundromat. Two flat-screen TV sets blasted away overhead. Children played noisy video games as patrons walked up and down isles shouting into their cellular phones to be heard above the din- the cacophony they were creating. And I recall thinking that had this been 1950, I might have been able to read a book in peace or hold a conversation with someone.
Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org
