Thursday, October 1, 2026
Audiences members seemed pleasantly intrigued when guest speaker and Lynbrook historian Art Mattson spoke at the Lynbrook Library on June 15 on how villages and streets got their names. Mattson’s lecture was a part of the Historical Society of East Rockaway and Lynbrook’s fourth annual “Historical Retrospective.”
Mattson not only offered cold, hard facts, but thoughtful insight into the naming of Lynbrook, first known as “Rechqua-Akie.” The Rockaway Indians called the area “Rechqua-Akie” (meaning a “sandy place”) in the early 17th century, Mattson noted. European settlers changed the name to “Rockaway,” which was later re-named “Near Rockaway” because it was near Hempstead, the main settlement in 1641. The moniker “Clink-Town” was next, named for one of the last Indians who lived within the village’s Ocean and Merrick avenues section. The village was again renamed “Parson’s Corners” around 1790, Mattson said. Settlers began building churches, Mattson noted. The village’s next name was “Bloomfield” for the lovely fields that were once here.
The most famous former name, “Pearsall’s Corners” was next. Wright Pearsall opened a general store, and post office at the village’s five corners area (intersection of Merrick Road, Hempstead and Atlantic avenues and Broadway) around 1830. Once the railroad arrived in 1867, some residents changed the village’s name to “Pearsallville.” Those residents did not want their area to be named after the “Pearsall’s” train station, Mattson said. “Pearsallville” was shortened to “Pearsalls,” and that name stayed the same until the 1890’s.
Mattson briefly recounted the “Lynbrook” name change: “A Southside Observer newspaper editorial in February 1892 said to change the name to a more ‘euphonious cognomen,” said Mattson, referring to “sweeter-sounding” name. “Other Long Island villages have within a few months changed their names, and they suggested Pearsalls do the same,” he said.
“Lynbrook” was suggested because the word is “Brooklyn” with reversed syllables. “Brooklyn was then thought to be a metropolis,” Mattson said. So on May 1, 1984, Pearsalls officially became “Lynbrook.”
Mattson said it was either Author or R.D. Jacques who mostly likely invented the name, even though Thomas Brennan, the then Pearsalls LIRR stationmaster and reporter for the Brooklyn Times, got the credit.
As for the street names, some reflect former village families’ names like Abrams Place, and past mayors’ names like Greis Park, named for the village’s 12th leader, Fred Greis. Others are named after poets, such as Hawthorne Street for Nathaniel Hawthorne; or Indian names, like Merrick Road for the “Merikoke” tribe.
