Brookville Queens

The formation of the geographic Village of Brookville occurred in two phases. The village was concentrated along Cedar Swamp Road (Route 107), a long, narrow stretch of land, when it was incorporated in 1931. The village’s acreage was nearly doubled to 2,650 acres (1,070 ha) when the northern part of the unorganized region known as Wheatley Hills was annexed and integrated into it in the 1950s.

Suco’s Wigwam was the name given to the area when the Town of Oyster Bay bought what is now Brookville from the Matinecocks in the middle of the 17th century. Many of the English pioneers were Quakers. Dutch immigrants from western Long Island soon joined them, naming the surrounding area Wolver Hollow, presumably because wolves congregated to drink at spring-fed Shoo Brook. The settlement was known as Tappentown for the majority of the 1800s, after a well-known family. Following the Civil War, Brookville gained popularity and was included on maps in 1873.

In the early 20th century, as affluent New Yorkers constructed opulent mansions, Brookville’s two centuries as a farm and woodland backwater drastically transformed. There were 22 estates by the middle of the 1920s, which contributed to the development of Nassau’s North Shore Gold Coast. One was Broadhollow, a 108-acre (0.44 km2) estate with a 40-room manor house owned by attorney, financier, and diplomat Winthrop W. Aldrich. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr., a former president of the Pimlico and Belmont racetracks, was Broadhollow’s second owner. The renowned financier Edward Francis Hutton and his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post, the daughter of cereal inventor Charles William Post, constructed the opulent 70-room home known as Hillwood on 178 acres (0.72 km2).