A Short Casual History of Orangetown

Every property in Rockland County, New York State’s second smallest County, has its own history, whether it has evolved or not. This is my hometown Orangetown story, not a scholarly historical paper, just a conversational story that fascinates me and hopefully you.

It starts in 1878 when Orangetown was a sparsely populated farm town, when a group of Dominican Nuns searching for a home outside of New York City for their work with children, many children of immigrants, many orphans, purchased property on Western Highway in the hamlet of Blauvelt. That property evolved into a Convent for the Nuns named St. Joseph’s, and an iconic orphanage named St. Dominic’s Home For Children. Then it evolved into Dominican College, homes for intellectually/developmentally adults, headquarters for a huge Foster Child & Adoption program serving New York City and surrounding communities, other Child Care programs and human service programs in 6 other States.

In 1884, another Branch of the Dominican Nuns purchased property in the hamlet of Sparkill for another orphanage for boys in New York City who were also mostly children of immigrants and a Motherhouse for the Nuns. The orphanage was named for St. Agnes Home For Children. The orphanage is gone but the property evolved into St. Thomas Aquinas College, Thorpe Village for Senior Citizens [200 units], Dowling Gardens for Senior citizens [111 units] and, Aquinas/Rosary Academy Catholic High School for Girls, which evolved into a home for the Day programs operated by Camp Venture for our intellectually/developmentally handicapped.

In 1897, Nyack College, Alliance Theological Seminary and the Jaffray School of Missions came to the Village of South Nyack and its environs. It was a treasured community asset which sadly has moved back to New York City, leaving its evolution to be determined.

In 1907, Dr. Lederle opened up Lederle Laboratories on 300 acres on Middletown Road in the hamlet of Pearl River [and Nanuet ] for medicine/pharmaceuticals research and production. Over time, its name changed to American Cyanimid Company to Wyeth to Pfizer to its present name of New York Center For Innovation. Its history is almost unbelievable. It was world changing. Hundreds of thousands lives have been saved by what was done on that property, with an accented role during WWWII. It is now evolving itself.

In 1926, New York State constructed one of the world’s largest psychiatric facilities on 615 acres in the hamlet of Orangeburg and abutting the hamlets of Pearl River and Blauvelt. It was named Rockland State Hospital. It served about 9,500 patients at one time. It is now named Rockland Psychiatric Center and serves hundreds in many different genres of care. The evolution of this property is as rich as the above. It is home to Rockland Children’s Psychiatric Hospital and the New York State Nathan Kline Institute For Psychiatric research, which has had an impact around the world.

When the hospital was downsized vis a vis the policy of “Deinstitutionalization”, many of the acres were declared surplus and put to great uses such as private homes, an amazing number of acres of town youth recreational sports fields, the largest Gaelic Athletic Association Center in the USA, the Etihad City Football Academy [a soccer training camp], a 9-hole town golf course and the JP Morgan Chase data center.

In 1943, the world’s largest Port of Embarkation in WW II was built in the hamlet of Tappan, which abutted other Orangetown hamlets. It involved over 2,300 acres. It was named “Camp Shanks” and nicknamed “Last Stop USA”. Over 1.3 million GI’s from all over American left from here to fight the nazi army in Europe. Many fought and died on D-Day. After the war it provided GI housing and ultimately was sold off for multiple purposes. The last 14 acres are being used by the Town of Orangetown to create retention basins to prevent storm surface water from flooding the Sparkill Creek and by a Not-For Profit Charity [which I co-founded] named “Rockland Homes For Heroes”, the mission of which is to build and operate Supportive Apartments for homeless veterans in memory of all the veterans who did not come home from war.

The bottom line of this conversational story is how these properties in this town have improved the lives of many hundreds of thousands.

I close by thanking the people of Orangetown who allowed me to represent these properties on the Rockland County Legislature for over 40 years. It was a profound honor.