Old Westbury, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

The Village of Old Westbury's own history page dates its settlement to 1658, when it was known as "Woodedge" for its location on the north side of Jericho Turnpike, where the flat Hempstead Plains to the south gave way to rolling woodland.^[1] Quaker settlers renamed it Westbury after their home town of Westbury in Wiltshire, England, and for the next 225 years the area remained, in the village's words, virtually isolated by choice, with 90 percent of its land in Quaker hands and consisting of 42 self-sufficient farms, a post office-general store, a blacksmith shop, a grist mill, a Friends meeting house, a carpet and dye works and a nursery.^[1]

A second era began in the late 1890s when wealthy New York City families started building large estates on the village's rolling terrain; within a decade only nine Quaker farms remained, the rest of the land given over to self-sufficient estates "from dairy farm to polo field."^[1] Among them, Jay Phipps and his wife Margarita "Dita" Phipps bought 175 acres in Westbury, and after the 1904 birth of their first child began construction of Westbury House; the family, by then including three children, moved into the finished house in March 1907.^[10]

The estate years brought the village to prominence, and in 1924 its twelve square miles of land were incorporated as the Village of Old Westbury, then home to 500 residents with an assessed valuation of $6,500,000; the village's own police department began operating that same year.^[1][3] After World War II, new parkways drew families seeking smaller parcels within commuting distance of the city, a shift the village credits, along with rising real-estate taxes, with ushering in its present, more subdivided character.^[1]

In 1959 the Phipps family's Westbury House and its grounds were opened to the public as Old Westbury Gardens, described by the estate as "one of the few remaining intact country houses and gardens from Long Island's estate era."^[10] The National Park Service listed Old Westbury Gardens on the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 1976, crediting architect George A. Crawley and dating the property's period of significance to 1900-1924.^[11]

How the roads got here

Jericho Turnpike, signed as NY 25, runs along part of the village's boundary: the village's own history places its 1658 settlement "on the north side of Jericho Turnpike," and a Nassau County Supreme Court decision from 2000 describes a 97-acre parcel "bounded on the south by Jericho Turnpike" within the Incorporated Village of Old Westbury.^[1]

The Long Island Expressway (I-495) passes through the village. A New York State Department of Transportation list of commemorative bridge names records the "Police Officer Michael J. Califano Memorial Bridge" as the Glen Cove Road overpass crossing the expressway "in the Village of Old Westbury" (the department's own document prints the route number as "I-95" at that entry, apparently in error, since the same list elsewhere identifies the expressway as "I 495").^[12]

NYSDOT separately tracks Glen Cove Road itself as a state reference route, numbered NY 900B, running "from the Oyster Bay Town line to NY 107" in Nassau County.^[13]

Law and legal history

The Village has twice lost federal First Amendment challenges to ordinances restricting door-to-door newspaper distribution. In Distribution Systems of America, Inc. v. Village of Old Westbury, 785 F. Supp. 347 (E.D.N.Y. 1992), the distributor of the free weekly This Week sought to enjoin enforcement of Chapter 149 of the Village Code, which required a license to distribute unsolicited written material; the court held that "Chapter 149-4 of the Village Code of Old Westbury constitutes a prior restraint, puts unbridled discretion in the hands of the Village Board of Trustees, and violates the First Amendment," and granted a preliminary injunction.^[14] The Village then revised the ordinance to let residents opt out of unsolicited deliveries, but in a second ruling in the same case, 862 F. Supp. 950 (E.D.N.Y. 1994), the same court found the revised law still unconstitutional, calling an outright ban on delivering unwanted print material "inimical to the freedom of the press."^[15] The Village's current code lists Chapter 149 as "(Reserved)," with no substantive text in force.^[9]

The Village's Board of Assessors also fought a religious property-tax exemption through the courts. In Matter of Korean Joong Bu Presbyterian Church of New York v. Incorporated Village of Old Westbury, 303 A.D.2d 755 (2d Dep't 2003), the Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed a Nassau County Supreme Court judgment upholding the Board of Assessors' January 22, 2002 denial of a real property tax exemption for the 2002-2003 tax year.^[17]

The Village's own prior-written-notice local law, Code Chapter 27 ("Municipal Liability"), was adopted May 17, 1993 by Local Law No. 2-1993. Its legislative-intent section invokes Municipal Home Rule Law § 10(1)(ii) and the New York Court of Appeals' decision in Kamhi v. Town of Yorktown, 74 N.Y.2d 423 (1989), and states the law is meant to mirror Village Law § 6-628, which bars suits over defective Village property absent prior written notice.^[6] Section 27-2 bars civil actions over defects in Village streets, sidewalks, parks and similar property "unless written notice of the existence of such condition had theretofore actually been given to the Village Clerk"; as amended June 23, 2025, the section now also states that a defect report submitted through email, the Village's website or app, or a Village social media page "does not satisfy the process and procedure for submitting written notices of defect required by this section."^[7] Section 27-3 requires that notice be served on the Village Clerk personally or by registered or certified mail.^[7]

Government, courts and policing

Old Westbury maintains its own police department rather than relying solely on the county force. The Nassau County Police Department's Second Precinct, headquartered at 7700 Jericho Turnpike in Woodbury, covers the broader area "from Old Country Road to the Long Island Sound and from east of the Wantagh State Parkway to the Suffolk County border," but its own community list identifies Old Westbury, along with the SUNY campus there, as being "patrolled by their own police department[s]" rather than directly by county patrol.^[8]

Local violations of the Vehicle and Traffic Law and of Village ordinances are heard in the Old Westbury Justice Court, based at Village Hall, 1 Store Hill Road, which the Village describes as responsible for "judicial proceedings concerning Vehicle and Traffic violations that occur within the Village, along with violations of Local Village Laws."^[5] Larger civil matters, including personal-injury suits, 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.^[20] 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."^[21]