Five Towns

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
The Five Towns also refers to Stoke-on-Trent in Arnold Bennet's novels.

The Five Towns is an informal grouping of villages and hamlets in Nassau County, New York, United States on the South Shore of western Long Island adjoining the border with Queens County in New York City. Despite the name, none of the communities are towns. The Five Towns is usually said to be comprised of the villages of Lawrence and Cedarhurst, the hamlets of Woodmere and Inwood, and "The Hewletts", which consist of the villages of Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor and Hewlett Neck and the hamlet of Hewlett. The "towns" most commonly included as constituents of the "Five Towns" are all within the Town of Hempstead.

The name "Five Towns" dates back to 1931, when individual Community Chest groups in the area banded together to form the "Five Towns Community Chest", consisting of Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett. The organization still exists (as of 2006) as a local charity, but the "Five Towns" moniker caught on as a designation for the entire area.[1] A 1933 article in The New York Times references a Girl Scouts of the USA encampment by the "Five Towns Council, embracing the villages [sic] of Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett", interestingly, listed in order by LIRR station.[2]

Contents

[edit] Communities

Each of these "towns" has a consecutive stop on the Far Rockaway Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. All five communities are part of the Town of Hempstead. Woodmere is the largest and most populous community in the Five Towns, while the commercial and cultural hub is usually considered to be Cedarhurst, with its fine shopping area (along Central Avenue) and nearby park.

There are more communities that are sometimes considered to be part of the Five Towns, including Atlantic Beach, Woodsburgh and North Woodmere, which are all officially part of the Lawrence Public Schools (except for a part of North Woodmere and all of Woodsburgh, which is part of the Hewlett-Woodmere School District), but their inclusion in the Five Towns is unclear since there is no official Five Towns designation. Woodsburgh is arguably part of Woodmere, Atlantic Beach is geographically part of the same barrier island as Long Beach and North Woodmere is an unincorporated section of Valley Stream.

Each of the Five Towns, with the exception of Inwood which is predominantly Christian, has a large Orthodox Jewish community, with many Jewish day schools, yeshivas, synagogues, kosher restaurants and Judaica stores serving the needs of the surrounding community. Roman Catholics also make up a large percentage of the Five Towns.

[edit] Education

There are two school districts in the Five Towns, the Lawrence Public Schools (District 15) and the Hewlett-Woodmere School District (District 14). Roughly speaking, the Lawrence school district contains all of Lawrence, Cedarhurst and Inwood, and part of Woodmere while the Hewlett-Woodmere district contains all of Hewlett and part of Woodmere and extends partly into the neighboring villages of Lynbrook and Valley Stream (North Woodmere and Gibson, in particular).

[edit] Five Towns College

Although Lawrence was planned to be the location for Five Towns College, the original site was no longer available by the time the school received its charter in 1972. The college is currently located in Dix Hills, Suffolk County. Other than the proposed original site, the school never had a physical connection to the Five Towns.[3]

[edit] Five Towns celebrities

[edit] References

  1. ^ "If You're Thinking of Living in: The Five Towns", The New York Times, November 20, 1988. p. R11
  2. ^ "TO BREAK CAMP AT AEN.; Girl Scouts of Rockaways Leave Wednesday After 2 Weeks' Stay.", The New York Times, July 25, 1933. p. 16.
  3. ^ Five Towns College: Our History, accessed July 6, 2006

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../f/i/v/Five_Towns_a719.html"
In other languages