A 'Stop' Sign of the Times

By Paul Manton.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning literary naturalist Edwin Way Teale is said to have been prompted to leave Long Island behind for greener pastures in 1962 when, after 33 years living and writing in Baldwin, he saw a sign announcing the arrival of a shopping center. That's a bit of an exaggeration - see my "Edwin Way Teale: Long Island Entomologist" in the Fall 1995 issue of The Long Island Forum - but it speaks to how we often see omens of momentous changes afoot. This certainly happened with the mind-boggling explosive growth of Levittown between the summer of 1947 and the summer of 1948.

A sign of that time was described by Lynne Matarrese in her The History of Levittown, New York: "Even though the neighboring communities of Hempstead and Hicksville were already quite suburbanized, Island Trees was rural enough that in 1948 'No Hunting' signs had to be posted in the fields east of Jerusalem Avenue and north of the Turnpike to protect the new resident's children playing in the area.”

Nothing indicates that suburbia "has arrived" to a previously rural community than the appearance upon the landscape of those things that quickly fade into obscurity by virtue of their ubiquitous nature.  Take the "Stop" signs, for example. Levitt & Sons conceived of the curvilinear roads and circuit board-like layout of Levittown in direct opposition to traditional grids found in some pre-WWII suburban developments in our area - Nassau Gardens (Hicksville), Hempstead Lawn (Bellmore), and the uncompleted Green Acres (Levittown) - precisely to regulate traffic flow and automobile speed.

Nonetheless, "Stop" signs quite nearly became an afterthought and this led to some distress given the increasing number of intersection mishaps in the community's first year. Indeed, several mishaps at the Wolcott and Blue Spruce intersection, presumably owning to the former's straightaway and proximity to the North Village Green and Hempstead Turnpike, prompted a number of letters-to-the-editor in the fledgling Levittown Tribune. (Ironically, in the early 1990's there was a fatal accident here).

Demands for "Stop" signs were soon met but thus was born the Levittowner's love/hate relationship with this particular traffic regulation device. Levittowners are infamous for what some have called "the Levittown stop,” namely, rolling slowly by the sign without ever actually coming to a complete standstill. There's a lesion in "the Levittown stop" about unintended results and the limits whereby civil authorities can successfully regulate the public's behavior much as, in the past three or four years, serious questions have been raised about the effectiveness of traffic cameras in our community (aside from the issue of revenue-generating motives).

Unlike the short-lived "No Hunting" signs in the heart of the Island Trees School District that vanished in 1951 as Levitt & Sons and builder Jerome Miller developed the area immediately around the old "Island of Trees" at breakneck speed - gobbling-up the old Gellweiler, Rowehl, Von Essen, and Lotterman farms - the "Stop" signs are here to stay. Removing them, even for one day, would only stimulate our auto repair, medical care, and funeral industries.


Their effectiveness, however, is compromised by increasingly distracted drivers. I stood for an hour in the middle of Universe Drive, the principal Wantagh Avenue-to-Jerusalem Avenue conduit for those seeking to avoid the congestion and traffic lights of Hempstead Turnpike and observed that of the 2003 cars that passed by, 40% actually came to a complete halt at the "Stop" sign, 15% were on cell phones, and 30% of  those who failed to stop were on cell phones.

These are the driving habits that lead to wayside utility poles festooned with flowers, letters, and stuffed teddy bears. Edwin Way Teale believed that "coming soon" sign symbolized an environment unsafe for wildlife. Perhaps the "Stop" sign, ironically, has come to symbolize the hazards faced by our community's human residents.

Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org