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

History

Before the railroad, the site of today's Woodmere was known locally as Brower's (or Brewer's) Point, a half-dozen farms whose owners and tenants lived off the produce of the surrounding meadow and marsh land, in what was then a rural part of the Town of Hempstead's Far Rockaway section (itself then part of Queens County, before Nassau County split off in 1899).^[9] The South Side Railroad Company of Long Island began building a branch from Valley Stream to Far Rockaway through the area in 1868 and was running steam trains over it by 1869; the new station was built at Brower's Point on land donated by landowner Samuel Wood, a retired importer who bought up the neighboring farms and renamed the whole area Woodsburgh after himself.^[9] Wood also built the large Woodsburgh Pavilion Hotel, which could accommodate 500 guests and cost $400,000 to build and furnish, drawing wealthy and fashionable visitors and the businesses that served them.^[9] After Wood's death in 1878 his estate passed to Abraham Hewlett, and a separate post office district — renamed Woodmere at the postal authorities' suggestion, after repeated confusion between mail for "Woodsburgh, N.Y." and Woodbury, Long Island — replaced the Woodsburgh name for the community generally (a small, separately incorporated Village of Woodsburgh nearby kept the older name).^[9]

Woodmere's rapid modern development, however, is credited by a 1918 history of the Rockaways "entirely to Robert L. Burton of New York City," who in 1901 bought roughly 300 acres from the Samuel Wood estate (by then managed by the Woodmere Land Improvement Company) for $125,000, plus about 100 more acres north of the railroad tracks.^[9] Burton tore down the old Woodsburgh Pavilion Hotel — closed for about four years by then — and removed or demolished every remaining residence except one, then laid out new streets, dredged the creeks in Woodmere Bay, built a bridge, and added tennis courts, golf links, a clubhouse, and gas, water, electric and telephone service, spending more than a million dollars in the aim of making Woodmere, in the same book's words, "the highest type of restricted suburban residential development" in the style of Tuxedo Park and Lenox.^[9] In 1909 Burton sold his remaining interest to the Hudson Realty Company, headed by Maximilian Morgenthau, which continued developing the area; by 1918 the community had its own business center on Broadway and the Woodmere Club's golf links were, in the same source's words, "famous throughout New York."^[9] Woodmere has never incorporated as a village and remains an unincorporated hamlet of the Town of Hempstead to this day.^[1]

How the roads got here

The Long Island Rail Road's Far Rockaway Branch, which runs through Woodmere on its way to Far Rockaway, opened to the public on July 29, 1869, according to a 1961 history of the railroad.^[7] A 1918 local history describes an older network that predates the railroad: Woodmere (then Brower's Point) was reached from Valley Stream by "a roughly-made road, the present Broadway," which met the "old Jamaica turnpike" at the famous "Jennings corner" in what is now the Village of Lawrence — the site of the first Far Rockaway post office, where mail for the whole peninsula was once left to be collected.^[9] New York State's official touring-route description places NY 878 — called locally the Nassau Expressway in this stretch — on a route through Cedarhurst, Inwood, Lawrence and Atlantic Beach, but Woodmere itself does not appear in that state touring-route listing, indicating NY 878 does not run directly through the hamlet.^[8]

Law and legal history

Because Woodmere is unincorporated, the prior-written-notice law that governs claims over defective town-owned streets and sidewalks here is the Town of Hempstead's, not a separate village code: Town Code Chapter 6, "Liability of Town," requires written notice to the Town before a civil action may be brought over damages from defective highways (§6-1), defective town property (§6-2), or defective traffic signs, sidewalks, walkways, footpaths or bicycle pathways (§6-3), and prescribes how such written notice must be served (§6-4).^[4]

Criminal and Vehicle and Traffic Law matters arising in Woodmere are handled by the Nassau County District Court, one of the state's District Courts that — per the Unified Court System's own description of the Long Island Courts — "arraign defendants accused of felonies and handle misdemeanors and lesser offenses as well as civil suits involving claims up to $15,000" in Nassau County and the five western towns of Suffolk County.^[3]

Government, courts and policing

Woodmere has no mayor, village board, or justice court; Town of Hempstead departments and Nassau County government provide the local-government functions that an incorporated village would otherwise supply.^[1] The Nassau County Police Department's Fourth Precinct, headquartered at 1699 Broadway in Hewlett, patrols Woodmere along with the rest of the Five Towns and neighboring communities.^[2] As recently as 1918, by contrast, a local history reported "there is no police force in Woodmere," with uniformed watchmen employed in some sections and street cleaning handled by a private Woodmere Improvement Society — a reminder that county-wide professional policing in this part of Nassau is a twentieth-century development.^[9] Fire protection is provided today by the Woodmere Fire Department, and public education by the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools district, headquartered at 1 Johnson Place in Woodmere.^[5][6] The volunteer fire department's own 1918 lineage traced back to the Woodmere Hose Company and the Empire Hook and Ladder Company, by then merged into a roughly eighty-member department.^[9]

Railroad and transit

Woodmere is served by its own stop, Woodmere station, on the LIRR's Far Rockaway Branch, which opened to the public on July 29, 1869.^[7]