On Sept. 27, the Village of Valley Stream will be kicking up its heels — and paying homage to its history in the process.
The late-fall parade and community block party promises to be the high point of a yearlong celebration marking Valley Stream’s 100th anniversary as an incorporated village.
“We’re expecting it to be a really big deal,” says Mayor Edwin Fare, a lifelong village resident and third-generation Valley Streamer. “We already have dozens of community groups participating. And after the parade, we’ll have food trucks, bouncy houses, a DJ and a live band, and then a light show in the evening — it’s going to be an awful lot of fun for the community.”
Valley Stream’s 100-year celebration kicked off last January with a centennial flag raising at Village Hall. And it hasn’t slowed down since.
In May, the village sponsored a moonlight centennial dance party and an art exhibition celebrating “100 Years of Valley Stream” and featuring the work of local artists Mike Stanko and Matt Khan.
In June, the Valley Stream Historical Society sponsored a special presentation and lecture by Christopher Critchley, a former teacher at Valley Stream Central High School, entitled “Honoring Fallen Heroes of Valley Stream.”
The Historical Society has two more sponsored events coming up to cap off its centennial activities. On Sept. 17, Bill Florio, the President of the Society, will conduct a special presentation and lecture entitled “Valley Stream in the 1920s.” And on Oct. 15, Richard Sullivan, a former Fire Chief of the Valley Stream Fire Department, will delve into the history of the Department in his presentation.
No celebration in the 21st century is complete without a little swag to mark the occasion. So the village has also created a selection of special centennial memorabilia, including pens, a commemorative coin and a stuffed animal likeness of Congo the Lion, Valley Stream’s unofficial centennial mascot. Congo gets his name from the venerable and beloved lion-shaped water fountain at the Village’s Arthur J. Hendrickson Park pool.
As Mayor Fare points out, anyone who has spent more than a hot second in Valley Stream since the beginning of January knows that the village is celebrating its centennial. Banners and special signage are everywhere.
“If you come to Valley Stream, I’m not going to let you forget it’s our 100th anniversary,” Fare said.
A few random yet interesting factoids about the village:
In the late-19th century, before it evolved into the inviting, family-oriented village on the Queens/Nassau County border that it is today, part of the area now known as Valley Stream was called Cookie Hill. According to the Valley Stream Historical Society, that moniker was due at least in part to the area’s “racy reputation.” Parts of the present-day Village of Valley Stream were also known at various times as Hungry Harbor, Tigertown, Rum Junction and Skunks Misery.
In 1929, a group of 26 women — including the legendary pilot Amelia Earhart — gathered at Curtiss Field, which sat on land that later would become the Green Acres Shopping Mall. The women formed a female pilot’s organization, which they dubbed “The Ninety-Nines.” Earhart was the organization’s first president.
By 1930, only five years after Valley Stream became an officially incorporated village, Curtiss Field was the largest commercial airfield on Long Island. At its peak, it saw 800 planes fly in and out of its airspace every day.
In 1992, the Pagan-Fletcher Restoration opened as a museum and the official offices of the Valley Stream Historical Society. The property was once the home of the Fairchilds, an eminent New York publishing family. The Restoration includes the 1915 Raustein Service Station, which was the first gas station in Nassau County. Originally located about a half-mile away from the Restoration site, the Raustein Station is now located on the west side of the Restoration property.
In 1996, Steve Buscemi, who grew up in Valley Stream, wrote, directed and starred in the semi-autobiographical independent film Trees Lounge. The film’s co-stars included Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony LaPaglia and Chloe Sevigny. Trees Lounge was a real-life bar in Valley Stream when Buscemi lived in the village. Though various Valley Stream locations were used in the film, the bar shots in the movie were actually filmed at Assembly Bar in Glendale, Queens.
Valley Stream’s centennial celebration figures to strike a chord with the vast majority of its approximately 42,000 residents, regardless of how long they’ve lived in the village. But the anniversary is particularly resonant for Mayor Fare, whose roots run as deep as anyone in the community.
Fare’s grandparents emigrated to Valley Stream from Bath, England in 1911 — over a decade before the village was officially incorporated. Fare’s parents, the mayor himself, all six of his brothers and his children were not only all born in the village, they all also attended Valley Stream Central High School.
In addition to serving first as a member of the Village’s Board of Trustees, then as mayor (an office he has held since 2011), Fare taught industrial arts for four decades in — you guessed it — the Valley Stream Central High School District, until he finally retired last year.
“When I was a kid, everything seemed to revolve around the high school,” he remembers.
Not surprisingly, the mayor is also a longtime member of the Valley Stream Fire Department. When it comes to the kind of community involvement he’d like to see from village residents, he references a saying among his colleagues in the department:
“Are you a member, or do you just belong?”
“What does that mean?” the mayor asked in a recent column for the Long Island Herald. “Well, it’s the difference between superficial participation and genuine connection. Saying you live in Valley Stream is one thing. But are you connected to the community? Are you actively engaged in volunteerism, community activities, local charities, youth sports or other community groups? There’s no substitute for a personal sense of belonging and acceptance. It also fosters and creates a resilient community.”
As Valley Stream puts the final touches on its yearlong centennial celebration, its mayor believes that a relentless focus on community engagement will help the Village thrive for the next 100 years.
