Village of Rockville Centre exploring options to preserve its history

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Several months after the Mayor’s Task Force on Historic Preservation formed last October, the Rockville Centre group helped organize an information session at Village Hall on Feb. 15 regarding state grants for protecting historic sites.

“I think this building itself was the first high school on the South Shore of Long Island,” Rockville Centre resident Jennifer Santos, the Task Force’s chairwoman, said after the meeting, referring to Village Hall. “So I think that in itself just shows the rich, historic cultural resource that this village is.”

Frances Gubler, manager of technical and grant programs for the Preservation League of New York State, led the two-hour informational session. Launched in 1993, the League’s Preserve New York grant program makes funds available to municipalities and others for historic structure reports, building condition reports, cultural landscape reports and cultural resource surveys.

Since last year, the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation has provided additional funds for projects in Nassau and Suffolk counties. More than $300,000 in historic preservation grants are available this year.

The Mayor’s Task Force, comprising nine local residents, formed shortly after the owner of the 19th century home next to St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, applied for a zoning variance to subdivide a 1.75-acre property.

“Everybody felt like things were slipping through our fingers and maybe there was a way to save them,” Ellen Grossman, treasurer of the Rockville Centre Museum, said of the historic homes and buildings throughout the village.

Grossman, a member of the Task Force, said the group is in its early stages, and through only two meetings has not discussed specific properties to target. However, she noted certain historic structures, like Village Hall, the Church of the Ascension, the site of the village’s former library on Clinton Avenue and a collection of Tudor-style homes built by Abraham Levitt beginning in the 1930s.

“There are a lot of homes and buildings that will start to go by the wayside because we don’t have any legislation in place to try to save the buildings.”

Sarah Kautz, preservation director of Preservation Long Island, noted that her organization has helped many municipalities do historic surveys, but that Rockville Centre has never done one. She added that the village played an important role in the suburbanization of Long Island.

“Rockville Centre and this whole area of southwest Nassau County has this really fascinating, rich history,” Kautz said. “There was great attendance today … and there’s a real hunger to kind of revisit these things.”

Kautz explained that once a historic survey is done of a building, district or entire village, it is then up to those involved how to proceed. A landmark or zoning ordinance can be voted on in relation to the property, for example, it can be added to the National Register of Historic Places, or it can simply give a better understanding of its significance.

“They’re teaching me, I have to be honest,” Rockville Centre Mayor Francis X. Murray said of the Task Force. “We would like to preserve any of our old structures in our downtown.”

Grossman said the Task Force would likely be applying for a grant to do a survey, which could be used to let owners of local historic buildings and homes understand the historical significance of various properties, as well as potentially spur local laws to aid in preserving history.

“There are a lot of other properties that have historical significance that we would hate to see go, but a lot of times you don’t have any control over it,” Grossman said. At the moment, she added, “We have absolutely no legislation to even try.”