Glen Cove Time Capsule

How Glen Cove became a city

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The next step in Glen Cove’s becoming a city was the election of a mayor and City Council in late 1917. The candidates formed two slates – pro-city and anti-city candidates. The pro-city group ran on the Republican ticket and the anti-city group on the Democratic ticket. But the sentiments of the public did not coincide with the major party lines, and from the outcome of the election one can only wonder whether anyone knew what they were voting for. Although two prior votes on becoming a city were both in favor, all but three of the anti-city candidates were elected, and men who had been opposed to Glen Cove’s incorporation as a city became the first mayor and three of the four city councilmen.

The election strained many friendships, but it was surely one of the strangest elections in the city’s 100-year history. Unfortunately, women of Glen Cove had no say in the election because women could not yet vote, however, this was about to change, at least in New York. In the same year as Glen Cove’s first election for a local government, a referendum on the November ballot passed, changing the New York State Constitution to give women the right to vote. This was three years before the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the vote nationwide.

New Year’s Day 1918, in the 250th year since Glen Cove’s founding, saw a large crowd present in the Justices Court building on Glen Street to witness the inauguration of the first mayor and City Council. The Justices Court building had been constructed 10 years prior, as a courthouse for the Town of Oyster Bay, and subsequently served as Glen Cove’s first City Hall.

Glen Cove’s new government appointed a city clerk and chief of police. Mayor Burns and the City Council had a number of issues to deal with as Glen Cove’s first government. Among them was negotiating with the Town of Oyster Bay for Glen Cove’s share of the taxes collected in that first year.

The city’s last historian, Dan Russell, wrote that the Justices Court building was “taken” by the city as compensation in a disagreement with the town, which continued to assess taxes on the city’s residents after Glen Cove broke away from the town. As a result, the Justices Court building not only became Glen Cove’s first City Hall but also its Police Headquarters. This building continued to serve as the GCPD headquarters and City Court into the 1990s, when the city acquired the old bank buildings on Glen Street near the center of the downtown and moved City Hall, the police department and city court to new locations. Today, the building has been restored to its configuration as it was when completed in 1908 and now serves as the home of the North Shore Historical Museum.

The City of Glen Cove was incorporated 100 years ago, and just before New Year’s Eve ringing in 2018, in the very same courtroom, the current mayor and City Council re-enacted the photo taken at the inauguration of Glen Cove’s first City Council on New Year’s Day 1918.

This story is based on a chapter of the book, “A History of Glen Cove,” co-authored by former city historians Robert R. Coles and Peter Luyster Van Santvoord, with additional information from the writings of city historian Daniel E. Russell.

– Laura Lane