New Hyde Park, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

According to the Village's own history, written by Village Historian Carol Nowakowski, the area "formerly called" Hyde Park is among the oldest settled parts of the United States: Dutch settlers arrived in the New Amsterdam area shortly after 1624, and the English crossed Long Island Sound in 1644 into the Town of Hempstead, of which this area was then part; the settlers' original town-meeting records, among the oldest local-government records in America, are preserved by the Town Clerk of the Town of North Hempstead.^[1] Thomas Dongan, Royal Colonial Governor of New York in 1683 and credited with devising New York's county system of government, lived on a large estate here called Success Pond, granted to him by the Towns of Hempstead and Flushing; its name survives in Lake Success and Lakeville Road.^[1] The estate later passed to George Clarke, Secretary of the Province, whose wife Anne Hyde had grown up on a family estate in England called Hyde Hall; Clarke renamed the property Hyde Park after her family name.^[1]

More than three hundred years ago, Richard Nicolls, Governor of the Province of New York, established a racecourse called Newmarket on the open ground of the Salisbury Plain "just to the south of the present New Hyde Park Rail Road Station," which the Village's history calls a "first" in the colonies; many participants and spectators are said to have traveled the road later known as Jericho Turnpike to reach it.^[1] The Long Island Rail Road came through the area in 1837, though the Village's history notes there was for years nothing to justify a station there.^[1] Nineteenth-century immigration reshaped the area: German and Irish farmers arrived at mid-century, followed later by Polish, Italian and, in the early twentieth century, Jewish families.^[1] Two German immigrants, John C. Christ and Philip J. Miller, settled in the area after the Civil War and became prominent local businessmen.^[1]

By 1924, rapid growth led local business people and residents to form a Board of Trade and a study committee -- whose members included William Bowie Jr., Herman Baer, Horace Cross, Benedict Hauck, J. Edwin Russell and George Simon Sr., later joined by five more -- to examine incorporation, with attorney Marcus G. Christ as counsel.^[2] The committee settled on a one-square-mile area, and residents approved incorporation in a referendum on August 19, 1927; the Incorporated Village of New Hyde Park came into being, and on September 15, 1927 voters elected J. Nicholas Krug as the first Mayor along with four trustees.^[2] The new Village Board's first meeting was held on September 19, 1927 in the Fire Hall on Millers Lane, later the site of the Bethany Bible Church; a village census taken June 4, 1930 counted 3,309 residents, a gain of 647 since incorporation, and a new Village Hall was dedicated on November 12, 1932.^[2]

How the roads got here

Jericho Turnpike, part of NY 25 today, is described in the Village's own history as "the ancient road" that spectators traveled to reach the colonial-era Newmarket racecourse, and it later opened as a toll plank road to New York City for farm produce; the current Village Hall and Village Court both stand on Jericho Turnpike.^[1][4]

New Hyde Park Road runs north-south through the village and crosses the Long Island Expressway; a New York State Department of Transportation list of commemorative bridge names records the "Police Officer Joseph P. Olivieri Jr. Memorial Bridge" as the New Hyde Park Road crossing of I 495 "in the town of North Hempstead."^[12] Between 2019 and 2021 the LIRR's Third Track expansion project eliminated at-grade crossings on New Hyde Park Road, Covert Avenue and South 12th Street within the village, replacing the New Hyde Park Road crossing with an underpass; photographs on the Village's own website document a ribbon-cutting for the reopened road attended by the Village Mayor, MTA and LIRR officials, and a neighboring village's mayor.^[5]

Lakeville Road, according to the Village's history, takes its name from the colonial-era "Success Pond" estate of Governor Thomas Dongan, the origin of the modern place-name Lake Success.^[1]

Government, courts and policing

New Hyde Park is one of what the Village's own website describes as "Nassau County's 64 incorporated villages," whose services can include "courts, police, fire protection" among other functions, though the scope varies by village.^[3] Unlike Old Westbury or Mineola, New Hyde Park's own website lists no separate village police department among its departments; instead, the Village hosts "Nassau County Auxiliary Police Unit #212," whose volunteer officers the Village describes as the "'eyes and ears' of the Nassau County Police Department," helping deter crime through routine patrols and managing traffic at community events.^[8] Day-to-day patrol falls to the Nassau County Police Department's Third Precinct, at 214 Hillside Avenue in Williston Park, whose own community list names both "New Hyde Park" and "North New Hyde Park" among the areas it serves.^[6][7]

Local Vehicle and Traffic Law violations and violations of Village ordinances are handled by the New Hyde Park Village Court at 1420 Jericho Turnpike, where Traffic Court sits on the first Wednesday of each month by appointment.^[4] Larger civil matters go to Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola, which the state court system says hears civil matters while County Court hears criminal matters outside New York City.^[9] Nassau County District Court in Hempstead "decide[s] civil suits involving claims up to $15,000, handle[s] misdemeanors and lesser offenses, and arraign[s] defendants accused of felonies."^[10]