Driving to Great Neck, Long Island for Naomi

In my last post I explained the reasons for taking our trip to Long Island, New York. We arrived there last September 2011. Because of a water leak, we could not check into our motel in the town of Oyster Bay, Nassau County, New York. We were told to come back in the evening. Where to go? All our luggage was in the car. It looked like it might rain so we needed to go somewhere close by. My friend Naomi of the blog Here in the Hills had asked me to go, if we got a chance, and look at her childhood home located in Great Neck, a city also in Nassau County. Great Neck was only 12 miles away, so we decided to drive there to check on Naomi’s former home.

Great Neck, Long Island,watercolor over pencil drawing by Thomas Hart Benton, American 1889-1975

We arrived and parked across what I believed was Naomi’s former house. I started taking pictures. I took pictures from the front, the side and even a picture of the backyard of this house.

Click on collage to enlarge, then click on individual pictures to biggify

It started to sprinkle so I went back into the car. We thought we would wait a while so I could take more pictures of the street. I reread Naomi’s email and that is when I realized I had taken pictures of the wrong house! I had not put my glasses on and misread the number of the house…. I felt pretty silly. We drove up a bit and found the right house.

It was not raining anymore so I started taking pictures again.



My husband was patiently waiting across the street near our rental car.



Another car had stopped in front of me – a lady inside was talking on a cell phone. I kept taking pictures of the side of the house and the street.



The lady came out of her car and asked me, suspiciously, what was I doing – could she help me? I answered that I was just taking some photos for a friend who used to live in this house years ago. She then said “Do you mean a member of the Hirshhorn family?” “Yes, Naomi.” She smiled and said she would be pleased to show me the inside of the house but she had an errand to attend to right now – “But, please go inside the yard and take pictures there, although we have placed a top on the swimming pool. I’ll be back shortly.” I pushed the gate and went inside the yard.



When the current owner came back she invited us inside. First we went into the living-room.



My husband was waiting for me, holding my purse with Naomi’s email, while I was photographing each side of the room which contained several beautiful musical instruments.



The lady of the house told me that being the start of the Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah, her house was being readied to celebrate it and many guests were coming that night for dinner. (Rosh Hashanah in 2011 started from sundown Wednesday 28 September until nightfall on Saturday 29, 2011.) I helped her spread the tablecloth on the dining room table.



She invited me to go upstairs and take pictures. I did not wish to go inside the bedrooms, not to intrude. She showed me that one of the bedrooms had been converted into a small den. I had gone up the main staircase but went down the back staircase. I am showing as many pictures of the house as possible so that Naomi can see how her house looks now.




We visited the kitchen and the current owner’s office/study which I did not photograph to preserve their privacy. I took pictures in the back den with its beautiful wood paneling and wood floor.



The current owner told me that the kitchen had been renovated but the outside of the large window had been left alone so as to keep the wood engravings. Naomi does not remember these engravings – they may have been sculpted after she went away to California while her mother lived in the house.



I liked the engraving of the violin and of the children’s initials.



We thanked the owner for having so kindly let us in her house and then we walked around the neighborhood. I am showing the photographs in case Naomi recognizes some of these houses.



Naomi told me that her father bought the house in Great Neck in 1926. She was born there and went to schools in town. She graduated from the local high school. Another well known person graduated a bit later, from the same high school – Francis Ford Coppola, (born in 1939) the director and producer of the Godfather movies, shown below.



In addition to the lot where the house is located her father had bought 3 more lots around it. One of the lots had a 3-car garage with apartments above them. The house-help used to live there. It was sold by the estate after her mother passed away and a house was built on the site, shown below.




In the 1920s Great Neck was a small town, a suburb of New York City. Naomi’s parents wished to raise their family in nice surroundings and in an area welcoming to Jewish parents. Her family was instrumental in establishing, with the help of 12 other families, a Reform synagogue in Great Neck called Temple Beth-El. At the time there where very few Jewish people in town. Her father had an office on Wall Street – and one in Toronto, Canada. Great Neck was a quick ride on the train and not far from the airport. Naomi’s father who had emigrated from Latvia at 6 years of age became an entrepreneur, financier, mining and oil businessman and an art collector. He amassed an extraordinary art collection which he gave to the United States in 1966. He donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. over 6,000 works - paintings and sculptures - with a $2 million endowment to hold the collection. This collection included works by Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and many others. Below is a sample of these art gifts, and I only looked under the letter B!

Top left Winter Morning by Paul Emile Blanchard, American (1881-1938) next to Bowl and Bottle by Bernard Butter, French (1928-1999).
Below left The Morning Paper by Warren Brandt, American (1918-2002) next to The Great Warrior of Montauban by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, French (1861-1929.)

When Joseph Hirshhorn, Naomi’s father, passed away in 1981, he willed 6,000 more art works and an additional $5 million endowment to the museum. Here are four more paintings below, picked at random.

Top right Evening Rocky Neck by John Sloan, American (1871-1951) next to Woman with Hat by Andre Derain, French (1881-1973) on left Body of a Woman by Pablo Picasso, Spanish (1881-1973) next to Boats on the Lake of Gorda by John Singer Sargent, American (1856-1925.)

After her schooling Naomi attended for two years The Feagin School of Drama in New York City at the Rockefeller Center. She still lived in Great Neck and commuted to the city via the local train. She had asked me if I had gone to the Great Neck station. I had not, but found these photos of the station below on the subway web site.




In 1961 Naomi left for Hollywood, California to continue her singing and acting career. You can read about it on the posts I wrote last April, part one here and part two here. The house in Great Neck was sold in 1966 after her mother’s death. The current owners bought the house in the 1970s. It was still early afternoon so we went to visit other interesting sights in Great Neck, but this will be in my next post.

I’ll end this with a painting by Naomi, who is a talented painter and has had several one-woman shows and whose art is part of several museums’ collections.

Two Distant Butterflies, synthetic polymer on canvas at the Smithsonian ( Naomi Hishhorn Caryl)

More next time…

Addendum:

In the comment column Naomi gave some clarifications – here they are:

“Incidentally....My parents built the Three Car Garage with the Apartment above it...it was not there. In fact there was nothing on that lot when my father bought it....They made some changes in the house, too, of course--as did my mother, after my parents were divorced, etc.....After all, she lived there for 40 years…….. One thing that needs a little bit of correcting...My parents moved to Great Neck because it was commuting distance to Manhattan and had very good schools. My father always moved to places where there were very FEW Jewish people because HE wanted to be a Pioneer in that regard---The First Jew, or, near that (lol)...So, in 1926 there were very few Jewish families in GN...And that is why in 1931-32 they and the other 12 family's started the first temple....Temple Beth-El... The first Rabbi was Jack Rudin. I went all through school with his son Steve.....Like I said, Great Neck was a small town back then.....”