Old Westbury, New York facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Old Westbury, New York
Village
Incorporated Village of Old Westbury
Old Westbury Village Hall, Police Station, and Post Office on August 25, 2021.
Location in Nassau County and the state of New York
Old Westbury, New York Location in New York
Country	United States
State	New York
County	Nassau County, New York
Towns	North Hempstead Oyster Bay
Incorporated	1924
Named for	Westbury, Wiltshire, England
Area
• Total	8.57 sq mi (22.20 km2)
• Land	8.57 sq mi (22.20 km2)
• Water	0.00 sq mi (0.00 km2)
Elevation	164 ft (50 m)
Population  (2010)
• Total	4,671
• Estimate  (2019)	4,614
• Density	538.26/sq mi (207.81/km2)
Time zone	UTC−5 (Eastern (EST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (EDT)
ZIP Code	11568
Area code(s)	516
FIPS code	36-54705
GNIS feature ID	0959332

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 richest 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.

Geography

Old Westbury is located at 40°46′55″N 73°35′50″W / 40.78194°N 73.59722°W / 40.78194; -73.59722 (40.782038, -73.597236).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 8.6 square miles (22 km²), all of it 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.

Wealth

Old Westbury Gardens, one of several estates built by the Phippses in Old Westbury

According to Bloomberg/Businessweek, in 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."

'In 2011, Forbes, having done a study of "America's Millionaire Capitals," found that the average net worth of Old Westbury households was $19.6M. The controlled study included only households with incomes greater than $200,000, which virtually 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. Bessemer Trust, which manages the wealth of the Phipps clan, is headquartered in the village.

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

History

1906 Vanderbilt Cup hairpin turn in Old Westbury

Westbury was founded by Edmond Titus, and was later joined by Henry Willis. Willis, one of the first English settlers, named the area after a town in his home county of Wiltshire, England. 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.

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. The residents, however, did not have to wait very long: The state was able to buy 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 Moses' next project, the Long Island Expressway.

Notable people

Mrs. Henry Phipps and Her Grandson Winston by John Singer Sargent (1906/07)

• Jean Aberbach, art collector, founder of Hill & Range music publishers that controlled much of the Elvis Presley catalog
• Carol Alt, supermodel, television personality
• Frank Altimari, judge
• Artful, champion thoroughbred horse
• Ashanti, musician
• Jerome Ash, owner of Sam Ash Music stores
• Doe Avedon, fashion model and actress, wife of Richard Avedon, the inspiration for Audrey Hepburn's character in Funny Face (Avedon was legally adopted by the wealthy employer of her biological father who served as a butler until his death)
• Robert Low Bacon, banker and congressman
• Florence Bellows Baker, philanthropist and horticulturist
• Charles T. Barney, president of Wells Fargo & Company, president of the Knickerbocker Trust Company
• Alva Belmont, socialite, woman's suffragist
• Oliver Belmont, son of August Belmont
• Harvey R. Blau, former mayor and deputy mayor; chairman and former CEO of Griffon Corporation
• Bold Reason, champion thoroughbred horse
• Albert C. Bostwick, Jr., steeplechase jockey, Thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder/trainer, heir to the Standard Oil Trust
• Dunbar Bostwick, horseman, pilot, sportsman, heir to the Standard Oil Trust
• George Herbert Bostwick, US Tennis player, jockey, trainer
• Pete Bostwick, Standard Oil heir, tennis champion
• Buckpasser. champion thoroughbred horse
• Carl Andrew Capasso, NYC contractor involved in bribery and tax evasion scandal
• Arielle Charnas, fashion designer and blogger
• Michael Cimino, film writer and director
• F. Ambrose Clark, equestrian, heir to Singer Sewing Machine Co.
• Eliot Cross, architect and owner of Cross and Cross
• Marguerite Sawyer Hill Davis, socialite and one of the wealthiest women of her time
• Herman Duryea, thoroughbred race horse owner and breeder
• Herman Edwards, Kansas City Chiefs coach
• Hervé Filion, harness racing driver
• Floyd H. Flake, member of U.S. House of Representatives
• Max Fortunoff, founder/owner of Fortunoff department stores
• Bethenny Frankel, SkinnyGirl cocktail founder, television personality (Real Housewives of New York City, Bethenny Ever After), author of multiple titles making The New York Times Best Seller list
• Robert L. Gerry, Jr., polo champion, real estate investor
• Erica Gimbel, socialite, reality television star on Princesses: Long Island
• Anson Goodyear, philanthropist, chairman of Gaylord Container Corporation, director of Paramount Pictures, director of the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad, first president of the Museum of Modern Art
• Victoria Gotti, daughter of John Gotti, reality television star, author
• Michael P. Grace, chairman of W. R. Grace and Company (NYC) and Grace Brothers & Co. Ltd. (London, England)
• C. Z. Guest, socialite, Truman Capote swan, celebrity gardener, author
• Cornelia Guest, socialite, crowned "Deb of the Decade" by Andy Warhol (1980s), author
• Frederick Guest, polo player, philanthropist, British politician and peer
• Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, Anglo-American polo champion, Phipps family heir
• Marie Norton Harriman, First Lady of New York, wife of W. Averell Harriman, art collector
• Thomas Hastings, architect, partner of Carrère and Hastings
• Leila Hadley, socialite, author
• Charles Kelman, eye surgeon, medical pioneer
• Gustave Maurice Heckscher, pioneer seaplane aviator
• Frederick Hicks, congressman, diplomat
• James N. Hill, Great Northern Railway heir, son of "the empire builder" James J. Hill and Margaret Sawyer Hill
• Thomas Hitchcock, polo champion
• Adam C. Hochfelder, real estate magnate
• Edward Francis Hutton, financier and co-founder of E. F. Hutton & Co.
• Kevin James, actor
• Reza Jarrahy, plastic surgeon, former husband of actress Geena Davis
• Peter S. Kalikow, real estate magnate, car collector, former Forbes 400 member, New York Post owner, Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey commissioner
• Foxhall Keene, champion automobile racer, polo player, thoroughbred breeder, purported original namesake for "Chicken à la King"
• Ed Kranepool, New York Mets first baseman
• Nicole Krauss, author, wife of Jonathan Safran Foer
• James Lanier, entrepreneur, banker, founder of Winslow, Lanier & Co., owner of Lanier Mansion
• John LeBoutillier, U.S. congressman
• Jack Liebowitz, original co-owner of DC Comics
• William Goadby Loew, financier and stockbroker
• James Brown Lord, architect
• Charles B. Macdonald, builder of first U.S. 18-hole golf course and several other influential courses, founder of United States Golf Association
• Jack Martins, NYS Senator, former mayor of Mineola
• Marvin Middlemark, inventor of/patent-holder for the "rabbit ears" television antenna
• Devereux Milburn, champion polo player, attorney at Carter Ledyard & Milburn, son of John G. Milburn
• E.D. Morgan III, Morgan family heir, Pioneer Fund director, grandson/namesake of the NY governor and U.S. Senator
• Bess Myerson, Miss America (1945)
• Nas, rapper
• John Parisella, successful horse trainer
• Darragh Park, artist, executor of the James Schuyler estate
• Angel Penna, Sr., thoroughbred horse trainer
• Murray Pergament, founder of Pergament Home Centers
• Henry Phipps, Jr., Carnegie Steel Company partner, philanthropist
• Henry Carnegie Phipps, Carnegie Steel Company heir, Phipps family heir, sportsman, Wheatley Stable owner
• Hubert Beaumont Phipps, Phipps family and Grace family heir, publisher, thoroughbred breeder
• John Shaffer Phipps, director of U.S. Steel and W. R. Grace & Co.
• Lillian Bostwick Phipps, socialite, thoroughbred horse stable owner
• Michael Grace Phipps, polo champion, Phipps family and Grace family heir, board member of Bessemer Trust and W.R. Grace & Co.
• Ogden Phipps, Carnegie Steel heir, tennis champion, philanthropist
• Leonard Pines, owner of Hebrew National
• Fred Plum, neurosurgeon who developed the term "persistent vegetative state" and treated President Nixon
• Lilly Pulitzer, designer, socialite
• Aby Rosen, art collector and real estate mogul with holdings including the Seagram Building, Lever House, W South Beach, Gramercy Park Hotel, Paramount Hotel, and Planet Hollywood Miracle Mile Shops
• Ely Sakhai, notorious gallery owner and art forger
• Steven Schonfeld, American billionaire, ranked 371 on Forbes 400
• Eleanor Searle, philanthropist, singer
• John Shalam, founder and CEO of Audiovox
• Igor Sikorsky, airplane developer and first major producer of helicopters
• David Simon, CEO of Simon Property Group
• Bernice Steinbaum, gallerist, dealer, curator, juror, speaker, author
• Howard Stern, entertainer
• Beatrice Straight, member of Whitney family, Academy Award-winning actress
• Willard Dickerman Straight, banker, diplomat, co-founder of The New Republic magazine
• Harold E. Talbott, early aviator, president of Dayton-Wright Airplane Company, third United States Secretary of the Air Force.
• Seabury Tredwell, future owner of what is now the Merchant's House Museum in Manhattan
• Barry Van Gerbig, socialite, son-in-law of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., NHL owner
• Consuelo Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt family heiress, wife of, firstly, Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough and, secondly, record-breaking pilot Jacques Balsan
• Gloria Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt family heiress, clothing and perfume designer
• Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt family heir, prominent railroad industrialist, philanthropist and yachtsman
• William Kissam Vanderbilt II, Vanderbilt family heir, prominent motor racer and yachtsman
• Francis Skiddy von Stade, Sr., polo champion, Saratoga Race Course president
• Ira Waldbaum, built up the Waldbaum's supermarket chain from a six store operation into one of the largest in the Northeast
• George Herbert Walker, banker and businessman, namesake and grandfather of U.S. president George H. W. Bush, namesake and great-grandfather of U.S. President George W. Bush
• Jimmy Walker, flamboyant New York City Mayor, part of the powerful Tammany Hall machine
• Electra Havemeyer Webb, collector, philanthropist, founder of the Shelburne Museum
• James Watson Webb, owner of New York Courier and Enquirer newspaper, politician
• J. Watson Webb, Jr., film editor, heir to both the Havemeyer and Vanderbilt families
• William Collins Whitney, founder of the Whitney family, financier, U.S. Cabinet member, thoroughbred stable owner
• Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Vanderbilt family and Whitney family heir, financier, philanthropist
• Dorothy Payne Whitney, Whitney family heiress, co-founder of The New Republic magazine and the Dartington School
• Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Vanderbilt family heiress, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art
• Harry Payne Whitney, member of Whitney family, thoroughbred horse breeder
• Marylou Whitney, socialite, philanthropist, thoroughbred stable owner
• Isaac Underhill Willets, prominent Quaker landowner
• Charles E. Wilson, president of General Motors, U.S. Cabinet member
• Robert Winthrop, member of the Dudley–Winthrop family, banker, philanthropist, namesake of Winthrop-University Hospital
• Steve Witkoff, Witkoff Group founder, owner of the Woolworth Building
• Louis Wolfson, financier, thoroughbred horse owner
• Raphael Yakoby, creator of Hpnotiq
• Alexei Yashin, professional hockey player, New York Islanders
• Kevin James, professional actor

Education

Public schools

The Wheatley School, one of Old Westbury's public high 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

• Holy Child Academy – A private Catholic day school, grades K through 8.

Colleges and universities

• New York Institute of Technology – A private undergraduate and graduate university.
• SUNY Old Westbury – A public, four-year liberal arts college.

See also

In Spanish: Old Westbury para niños