Inwood, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

Inwood is an unincorporated hamlet of the Town of Hempstead adjoining Far Rockaway, bounded (per a 1918 history of the Rockaways) by the turnpike road to Jamaica on the east, the Long Island Rail Road tracks and the Village of Lawrence on the south, and Jamaica Bay on the north and most of the west.^[1] The same source places the area's first settlement, by a small and reportedly rough-living community of Jamaica Bay fishermen, at roughly 1818, under the name North West Point — taken from the area's position relative to the more central part of Far Rockaway, of which it was then considered a part.^[1] The book describes these early "North West Pointers" as men who worked on, owned or operated fishing boats on Jamaica Bay, gathering at a waterfront spot still called "the Dock," at the foot of Bayview Avenue.^[1]

About fifty years before the book's 1918 publication — roughly the late 1860s, as the railroad reached the peninsula — the settlement became generally known as Westville.^[1] When residents applied for a Westville post office in the late 1880s, the Post Office Department refused because a Westville already existed elsewhere in New York State; in December 1888 residents chose a new name, Inwood, from a slate of candidates that also included Bayhead, Springhaven, Radwayton, Elco, Raway, Pike's Peak and Custer.^[1] The Inwood post office opened February 25, 1889, with J.D. Crosby as its first postmaster.^[1] The hamlet's westerly point, on high wooded ground at the actual northwest point of the peninsula, became home to the Inwood Country Club, incorporated in 1901 with Jacob Wertheim as first president and Frank Lewine as treasurer; growing membership led the club to purchase its present 300-acre grounds and build a larger clubhouse in 1914.^[1] By 1918 the community — which the book describes as having become home to a large Italian immigrant population alongside descendants of the original settler families — supported two public schools, two churches, a volunteer fire department, and the Sage Industrial School, a free vocational school for local children.^[1]

How the roads got here

The turnpike road to Jamaica — an ancestor of today's roads carrying the Rockaway Turnpike name through the Five Towns — is recorded as early as 1918 as Inwood's eastern boundary.^[1] When the Lawrence brothers developed neighboring Lawrence, the Inwood end of Lord Avenue was built as the first road constructed in that push, opening the section to further development of main streets, cross streets, and new houses.^[1] New York State's official touring-route description places NY 878 — called locally the Nassau Expressway in this stretch — on a route running through Cedarhurst, Inwood, Lawrence and Atlantic Beach to the Atlantic Beach Bridge.^[9] The Long Island Rail Road's Far Rockaway Branch, which runs along Inwood's southern edge, opened to the public on July 29, 1869.^[8]

Law and legal history

Inwood is the subject of one of the Town of Hempstead's more detailed recent land-use enactments. In December 2019 the Town adopted Article XLIII of its Building Zone Ordinance, "Transit Oriented Development and Related Districts for North Lawrence and Inwood," creating a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) District — divided into ten subdistricts, five in North Lawrence and five in Inwood — plus a Neighborhood (NB) Overlay District and a Residential Townhouse/Rowhouse (TR) Overlay District.^[7] The Town's own code states the TOD District's purpose is "to meet the demand for a housing prototype for residents, located in close proximity to mass transportation such as the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train stations," and allows up to 60 households per acre and buildings up to five stories, with an expedited Design Review Committee process that can waive standard site-plan review.^[7]

After the TOD District's approval procedures drew concerns that they did not allow a "hard look" at potential environmental impacts of multiple high-density projects, or meaningful public scrutiny of their cumulative effect, the Town Board enacted Chapter 101, a temporary moratorium barring new TOD District approvals; the Town's code lists amendments extending the moratorium by Local Law No. 23-2023 (effective April 4, 2023), Local Law No. 34-2023 (effective May 25, 2023), and Local Law No. 19-2024 (effective April 2024), with the moratorium's text stating it would lapse on June 18, 2024 absent further Town Board action.^[7]

Because Inwood has no village government, the Town of Hempstead's prior-written-notice law — Code Chapter 6, "Liability of Town" — governs claims arising from defective town-owned highways (§6-1), other defective town property (§6-2), and defective traffic signs, sidewalks, walkways, footpaths or bicycle pathways (§6-3), and prescribes how written notice must be served (§6-4).^[6] A 1918 account of Inwood's early self-governance credits the local Justice of the Peace, Lewis M. Raisig, working alongside neighborhood priests, with helping curb the disorderly conduct that had once given the hamlet a reputation for "dark deeds of violence."^[1]

Government, courts and policing

Inwood has no mayor, village board, or justice court of its own; Town of Hempstead departments and Nassau County government supply the functions an incorporated village would otherwise provide.^[1] The Nassau County Police Department's Fourth Precinct, headquartered at 1699 Broadway in Hewlett, patrols Inwood along with the rest of the Five Towns.^[3][4] Criminal and Vehicle and Traffic Law matters are handled by the Nassau County District Court, which — per the Unified Court System's own description of Nassau County's District Courts — "arraign[s] defendants accused of felonies and handle[s] misdemeanors and lesser offenses as well as civil suits involving claims up to $15,000."^[5] In 1918 the hamlet instead relied on a local Justice of the Peace, Lewis M. Raisig, and a roughly forty-member volunteer fire department formed from the merger of the Electric Hook and Ladder Company of Westville (chartered about 1883) and the Citizen's Hose Company.^[1]

Railroad and transit

Inwood is served by its own stop on the Long Island Rail Road's Far Rockaway Branch, which opened to the public on July 29, 1869.^[8]