OLD WESTBURY, NY

Old Westbury is a village in the Towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 4,671 at the 2010 census.

The Incorporated Village of Old Westbury is one of the wealthiest villages in the country as well as the second-richest zip code in the New York State, topped only by Harrison in Westchester County. In 2007, Business Week dubbed Old Westbury as New York's most expensive suburb. Old Westbury Gardens has been recognized as one of the three best public gardens in the world by Four Seasons Hotels magazine.

History

Westbury was founded by Edmond Titus, and was later joined by Henry Willis, one of the first English settlers. Westbury had been a Quaker community of isolated farms until the railroad came in 1836. After the Civil War, the New York elite discovered that the rich, well-wooded flat countryside of the Hempstead Plains was a place to raise horses, and to hunt foxes and play polo at the Meadow Brook Polo Club.

The Village of Old Westbury was incorporated in 1924, separating itself from Westbury, the adjacent area that housed many of the families of the construction and building staffs for the Old Westbury mansions. The "Old" part of Old Westbury's name reflects the community's need for its postal address to be different from the Westbury in Cayuga County, as per postal requirements (it had been using a postal address of North Hempstead for this reason); residents did this when they wanted a local post office ca. 1841, and when they incorporated Old Westbury as a village, they felt that it would be confusing for the village name and post office name to be different from one another. The Village of Westbury, located adjacent to Old Westbury, adopted that designation when it incorporated in 1932 as Cayuga County's Westbury's name was no longer being used.

The area was originally known as Wallage, which is related to a Native American term roughly meaning "ditch" or "hole." By February 1663, it was known as Wood Edge, and by October 1675 it was known as "the Plains edge" or simply Plainedge. The name Westbury began to be used for the area around 1683. The name Westbury was chosen by Henry Willis, who named it after Westbury, Wiltshire, his hometown in England.

Westbury House was the residence of Henry Phipps' eldest son, John Shaffer Phipps. Today, the property is operated as Old Westbury Gardens. Robert Low Bacon built 'Old Acres' in the style of an Italian villa. Other landowners were Thomas Hitchcock and his family, Harry Payne Whitney and his wife the former Gertrude Vanderbilt, founder of New York's Whitney Museum, at Apple Green (formerly a Mott house), Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, whose estate is now subdivided into the Old Westbury Country Club and New York Institute of Technology. The architect Thomas Hastings built a modest house for himself, 'Bagatelle', in 1908. A. Conger Goodyear, then president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City had a house built in 1938 by famed architect Edward Durell Stone, who also destined the building for Conger's museum. In 2003, the A. Conger Goodyear House was added to the National Register of Historic Places to protect the structure from being demolished to subdivide the expensive land surrounding it. The estate of Robert Winthrop, an investment banker and member of the Dudley–Winthrop family, for whom Winthrop-University Hospital was named, has been similarly preserved. Part of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's estate and her sculpture studio has been preserved and maintained by one of her grandchildren, Pamela Tower LeBoutillier.

When Robert Moses was planning the Northern State Parkway, the powers of Old Westbury forced him to re-site it five miles (8 km) to the south. Once the parkway was completed, many residents found it to not be the eyesore they had been anticipating and regretted making their commutes more inconvenient than necessary. In the 1950s, the state purchased land from Charles E. Wilson, a former president of General Motors who needed to sell off his Old Westbury estate to pull himself out of financial crisis and relocate to the nation's capital to serve in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's cabinet. The land, which runs along an edge of the village, was used for the Long Island Expressway.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , all land.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 4,228 people, 1,063 households, and 967 families residing in the village. The population density was 493.9 people per square mile (190.7/km²). There were 1,109 housing units at an average density of 129.5 per square mile (50.0/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 73.19% White, 4.24% African American, 0.02% Native American, 7.52% Asian, 3.67% from other races, and 2.37% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 17.14% of the population.

There were 1,063 households, out of which 43.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 82.2% were married couples living together, 5.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 9.0% were non-families. Of all households 5.6% were made up of individuals, and 2.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.33 and the average family size was 3.37.

In the village, the age distribution of the population shows 22.7% under the age of 18, 20.2% from 18 to 24, 19.9% from 25 to 44, 25.7% from 45 to 64, and 11.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 86.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 84.6 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $163,046, and the median income in the village was $184,298 for a family. The median earnings of the 899 households (89.6% of total households) in the village that took in earnings supplemental to income was $230,721. Males had a median income of $100,000+ versus $45,200 for females. The per capita income for the village was $72,932. About 1.1% of families and 3.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 1.5% of those under age 18 and 3.3% of those age 65 or over.

Education

Public schools

Residents are zoned to schools in one of four school districts, depending on where in the village they reside. They are the East Williston Union Free School District, the Jericho Union Free School District, the Roslyn Union Free School District, and the Westbury Union Free School District.

Private schools

Colleges and universities

Landmarks

Notable people

In popular culture

Film

Television

Reality television

Wealth

According to Bloomberg/Businessweek, as of 2011, Old Westbury is the second "richest" town in the United States, trailing behind only Palm Beach, Florida. The magazine previously dubbed the town "New York's wealthiest suburb."

Based on a study done by Bloomberg in 2015, the average household income in the village is greater than $640,000.

In 2011, Forbes, having done a study of "America's Millionaire Capitals", found that the average net worth of Old Westbury households was $19.6 million and with an average annual income of $1.2 million. The controlled study included only households with incomes greater than $200,000, which excluded only residents that are living in college dormitories and the staff of homeowners.

The village is famous for being the seat of many of New York's (and America's) wealthiest families, including the Phippses, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Webbs, Du Ponts, Winthrops, Mortimers, Belmonts and Huttons. While many of these older families—the founding members of the social elite and those that emerged during the gilded age—still count members as Old Westbury residents, the village has also maintained a substantial set of industrialists, businessmen, collectors, athletes and entertainers.

The Old Westbury Fund is a hedge fund that is named after the town.

When Forbes asked billionaire investor Steven Schonfeld what the "wisest investment" he ever made was, his answer was "Old Westbury land".