The 'Gregory' at Fifty

By Paul Manton.

One of those priceless little jewels that endow Long Island with its oftentimes overlooked cultural, historical, and scientific heritage amid the ubiquitous subdivisions, shopping malls, and automotive arteriosclerosis, the Hicksville Gregory Museum remains hidden in plain sight.

This unintended camouflage conceals a science and history museum housed in Hicksville's 1895 Heitz Place courthouse with scientific collections from all over the world - principally in the earth sciences - as well as history collections illustrating the community's metamorphosis form a 19th century railroad town to the heart of suburbia's commuter culture.

Permanent exhibits alone consist of Long Island's largest assemblage of rocks, minerals, exquisite crystals, and rare ores; extensive paleontological specimens including dinosaur eggs, bones, and plant and animal fossils; ornate sea shells from tropical waters; and hundreds of lepidoptera specimens representing all the major families and genera of butterflies and moths. For the student of history, there's the William Clark History Room featuring vintage maps and photographs, miscellaneous artifacts and ephemera, and memorabilia evocative of Hicksville's extraordinary transition from colonial era Quaker settlement to German immigrant hamlet in the age of steam and telegraph, to post-WWII suburb.


2013 marks two score and 10 years since the Hicksville Gregory Museum was established in the Cottage Blvd. residence of the late Dr. Gardiner E. Gregory. Brainchild is the oftentimes cliched moniker in describing things bequeathed to posterity by brilliant minds but it nevertheless describes "the Gregory" and its civic-minded if eccentric polymath founder from its origins in the Hicksville School District as a pet project to augment the science curriculum in the Sputnik era days. Employing his personal collection of natural history specimens, organizational skills, and his house, Dr. Gregory went on to lead a grassroots effort of parents, educators, civic organizations, and the local business community to preserve and restore the abandoned courthouse building and make it the institution's permanent home.
    
Over the years, throughout my tenure there as a docent/advisor, staff entomologist, and editor of The Cupola, I've worked side-by-side dedicated citizens who make such institutions a reality: the erudite historian Dick Evers, the encyclopedic Bill Clark, the talented photographer Ed Bady, the renaissance man John Kean, the chemist Tony Previte, and the educator Bill Bennet - all of whom have exited this life leaving behind a worthy legacy.

The establishment of the Hicksville Gregory Museum was a Tocquevillian endeavor warranting pause and consideration as we ponder the decline of volunteerism and social capital in contemporary American society. In his 2000 book, Bowling Alone, sociologist Robert D. Putnam observed that the decline of participation in civic organizations and social clubs and volunteering had been going on before the Internet came of its own and before 5:00pm meant heading out to one's evening job.

Between 1974 and 1994, the number of people who held leadership roles in civic organizations (museums, boards, church vestries, PTA councils) declined nearly 50%. The sea change is owing less to economics and technology than to changes in the social and intellectual values within American culture and the challenge to institutions of learning like the Hicksville Gregory Museum - no less than all our area's museums, historical societies, churches, and civic groups - is to be seen in this context. Will our museums become themselves archaic museum pieces as consumerism, pop culture, and Cyber Age alternatives to genuine human interaction usurp traditional community values, civic-mindedness, and hometown pride? At 50, the Hicksville Gregory Museum, if inadvertently, has become one of countless litmus tests applied to this question.
    
Still, at 50, the Hicksville Gregory Museum soldiers on. Events to commemorate its half-century of service to the community will pepper 2013.
    
Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org