Quietly Keeping Their Charm

Are the Canals still the Venice of Long Island?




By Joseph Kellard


When Joe Lehr returned to the classrooms he attended at East School to speak to elementary students during the school’s 80th anniversary two years ago, he found that all that had changed was the blackboards. “Now they're green,” Lehr said.

The school, at Neptune Boulevard on the west edge of the neighborhood know as the canals, is perhaps reflective of the general area: It has changed some, but retains certain distinct qualities from decades past.

The most defining, of course, are its four canals (named Sarazen, Ouimet, Hagen and Bob Jones) and three arched bridges. The canals are named after pro golfers from the era when they were built, the 1920s. So are nearly all the streets, which are characterized by long, narrow one-ways and dead-ends.

All this contributes to keeping the canals area — nestled in the northeast corner of town and bordered by Reynolds Channel to the north and Bob Jones to the east — relatively secluded and serene, a contrast to the bustling neighborhoods along the beach on the city’s south side.

“There are a lot of people in Long Beach who are truly not even aware of the canals area,” said Karen Adamo, a Long Beach real estate agent who has lived at the end of East State Street since 1991. “There's really no reason to come back here.”

Yet one 40-year resident of Heron Street, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that at least in some areas, traffic has increased considerably, including beach-goers who now park their cars there and walk across East Park Avenue to the boardwalk.

“It’s not nearly as quiet as it used to be,” the longtime resident said. “Drivers try to avoid Park Avenue, so they use East Chester. It's become like a highway. It's the same thing that happens over at Olive and Walnut streets.”

With more two-family homes and illegal mother-daughter apartments on some streets, lack of parking has become an issue, too, she noted.

“Parents who have two children, they have two cars, and that’s the case all over Long Beach,” she said. “And when you add on the illegal tenants, you add to the problem, and it's happening here, too.”

The demographics demonstrate another way in which the relatively quiet neighborhood has changed, yet stayed the same. There are two predominant types of residents: married 20- or 30-somethings who work in Manhattan and have young children, and retirees who have lived in the canals for decades.

Lehr, 77, and his wife, Bobbi, moved into their Doyle Street home, which faces the Sarazen canal, in 1960. They paid $21,000 for the four-bedroom ranch, where they raised three daughters and added eight rooms.

Expanded homes are common in the city, but in the canals most have remained legal single-families. Despite small properties, their proximity to the canals and the bay has given much of the otherwise middle-class neighborhood upper-class property values. Homes with their backyards on the canals begin at $850,000 or higher for those north of the bridges (allowing for larger boats).

“It's an area where you can get away from the craziness near the ocean and the congestion,” Adamo said, “and is more for people who are ready in their life for a little more quiet and where it's safer for their kids to play in the streets. ”

The original homes were Moorish in style and, later, sand castles, and served as second dwellings for the upper middle class. William Reynolds, Long Beach's founder and a former state senator, used his own money, as well as that of his millionaire friends Otto Kahn, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Payne Whitney, to build the waterways in the mid-1920s, calling the project “the canals of Lido.”

They were intended to complement the adjacent original Lido golf course Reynolds had built a decade earlier, all part of his vision to turn Long Beach into “the future Venice of America,” as he advertised it. Canals then, from Venice Beach, Calif., to Boca Raton, Fla., were a new resort concept, and Reynolds aimed to attract his rich and famous friends to the barrier island.

“People wanted an international feel,” Roberta Fiore, a city historian, explained.

In 1928, Reynolds razed the Lido Hotel, originally called the Lido Golf and Country Club, after which the Depression hit and shattered his master plan. (When he attempted to reimburse himself for his project from the city coffers, he was charged with misappropriation of funds and jailed.)

After World War II, more homeowners began to live in the canals year-round. At the time, flat-roofed bungalows (dubbed “daylight homes” for their picture windows) made up the majority of homes. Lehr's was originally built in 1945, and sold for $5,500 to veterans returning from World War II. When Lehr was a boy, he lived on Shore Road, but docked his rowboat on the canals.

The 1950s saw the canals become the least expensive area in the East End, attracting many blue-collar workers, who shopped at the supermarket that was always part of the strip of stores on East Park Avenue. Other notable businesses were O'Rourk's hardware and the Cozy Nook, a luncheonette where East School students could buy candy for a nickel. They played at the Clark Street playground near the bay.

“One of the things we loved about living in the canals is that you can do your life in whatever social fashion you choose,” Lehr said. “You can do it in black tie or jeans or shorts. It's a phenomenally mixed community where you can have a major head of a hospital live next door to a policeman. ”

The area drew the interest of the city's politicos, with Kerrigan Street turning into something of a “who's who” block in the 1960s, its residents including the likes of Larry Elovich and Arthur J. Kremer. Elovich, an attorney and Long Beach's former Democratic Party leader, bought his first home in 1963 on Kerrigan, across the street from Kremer, who, two years later, was elected to the state Assembly and became chairman of its Ways and Means Committee. Their annual summer block party included political dignitaries from around the state, including Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

“We would have this huge party every year where literally a couple of thousand people would come,” Elovich recalled.

At the end of Kerrigan, where former county Legislator Michael Zapson lives today, is a house overlooking the bay that was once owned by Joseph Ehrenreich, who had the exclusive rights to market Nikon products in the U.S.(Fiore said, however, that silent screen star Clara Bow neither honeymooned nor lived in a Moorish house on East Pine at Vinton Street, as is widely believed.)

During the 1960s and ’70s, waterfront property became more desirable. “I think more families who liked boating recognized it, and the property values weren't really escalating at that time,” said Joe Ponte, a real estate agent who was raised on Barnes Street and attended East School with Billy Crystal.

Lehr's house, like most “upland” homes on the canals’ east side, has a grassy strip of city-owned land between the street and the bulkhead — another feature that distinguishes the neighborhood, where residents typically put their lawn furniture and hammocks and build picket fences around the plots.

When he moved to the canals, the original bulkheads were in terrible disrepair, said Lehr, the longtime president of the East End Civic Association. From 1970 to 1972, the city installed steel bulkheads, dredged the canals and overhauled the bridges. For 30 years, until 2000, upland homeowners paid a portion of the cost of the rebuilt bulkheads —about $550 annually — as well as a dollar a foot to lease the property lining the canals, according to Lehr.

Today, the bulkheads have deteriorated considerably in some areas, including the Clark Street playground and on East State Street, where Adamo lives, and where the topsoil has sunk into the canals and bay water creeps into the park. In August, the City Council voted to approve an $8 million bond, a portion of which fund repairs of the city-owned bulkheads in the canals and at the park.

Nef Albergo, a 15-year resident of the landlocked Kirkwood Street, hopes that when the city refurbishes the park, it will also create a pier for avid kayakers like him. “My biggest problem is that if you don't live on the water, you don't have access to it,” Albergo said.

Albergo and Lehr were among the residents who were up in arms when the state ordered the city to reconstruct the bridges earlier this decade. Lehr argued that their cracks could have been easily repaired. “It was just a phenomenal waste of taxpayer money,” Lehr said of the project.

Albergo said that the new walls built on the bridges, which obstruct views of the canals, created more controversy. “They weren't what we wanted,” he said. “... They're more or less highway bridges.”

But the 40-year Heron Street resident said she speaks for others who believe the reconstructed bridges are a great new change to the area. “I think they came out good,” she said.

Prefabs Made To Order

Lido couple builds custom-made modular home

By Joseph Kellard


One day in late September, Michael Longworth found his future home spread down his block, Nantwick Street in Lido Beach.

Each of the modular home’s five sections rested on separate trailers lined up along the narrow street in the order that a stationary crane waited to piece them together.

Unlike the construction of standard skeletal homes, modular builders must measure the streets and other potential obstacles before the choreographed construction of their factory-built sections can unfold. And the Lego-like building of Longworth’s boxy, modern-style home became a spectacle for his neighbors.

“They were standing by the crane during the whole process,” he said. “We had a crowd.”

While modular home construction is something different in Lido, Longworth’s modern, custom-made dwelling remains a relatively new, evolving feature in the world of prefabricated homes, since most maintain a certain generic, cookie-cutter style. Even more individualized homes like Longworth’s are constricted by certain prefab parameters, never deviating too radically from the standards of the factories where they are built, and shaped also by local zoning codes.

Enter Paul Coughlin, a prefab architect with the Manhattan-based Resolution: 4 Architecture, who works with homeowners to fulfill their particular needs, from their home’s basic structure to the door hinges or pivots.

“I think what makes this house distinct is that everything in here was designed for Michael and [his wife] Victoria, right down to the sink and faucet and how they want their vanity to work and whether they want a window next to the tub,” Coughlin said. “All those features are what make it unique.”

Coughlin also tries to further distinguish each home by upgrading the quality of its features, including the Longworths’ large, high-end Andersen windows, bamboo flooring, Merillat Masterpiece cabinets and Corian kitchen counters.

The more fundamental challenge is how to build from the foundation. In Longworth’s case, his previous home, a one-story, 1929 bungalow, abutted the flora-thick dunes that blocked his family’s view of the beach and ocean. “For Michael, it was really important to engage the beach,” Coughlin said.

So Coughlin designed the house upside down, in that the bedrooms are on the ground floor and the kitchen, living room and dining room are on the top section, overlooking the ocean, where, along with a roof deck, the Longworths and their two daughters, ages 11 and 9, spend most of their waking hours.

“We obviously wanted the view,” said Longworth, who moved with his wife from Manhattan into their former bungalow in 1997.

Their kids’ bedrooms share the ground floor with the master bedroom and bathroom, and the Longworths wanted and got a dressing room with closets that divide the two areas. The master bathroom features a sauna in addition to the bathtub and a separate shower. A thick door with milky, laminated glass is just one of the home’s many upgrades.

The middle section has a playroom and guest room, and two smaller decks on the north and south sides. The ceilings on one level, however, don’t serve as the floor for the level above — each section has its own ceilings and floors.

“I think that adds to the stability,” said Matt Henry, owner of HKH Construction in Long Beach, who will complete the building.

The home’s five sections are tied together with steel-threaded rods. And while the transport can stress a prefab’s structure, Coughlin argues that modular homes are not the house of cards that has been their stigma, but are actually more stable than stick homes, with potentially just as long a shelf life. “The fact that it’s built in a factory in a dry, controlled environment makes a big difference,” he said.

After Longworth wrestled for two years through bureaucratic red tape for zoning variances and permits, he had the bungalow demolished in late August and, two months later, the house is on its way to being completed by year’s end.

“It went from knock-down to having a structure in less than a month,” said Longworth, who owns a Web site development company. “It saved us a hell of a lot of time.”

The prefab philosophy is that homes are typically constructed much more quickly than standard homes, and can be less costly. Coughlin said it usually takes about 16 months from the time a homeowner signs a contract to when the house is completed.

At first, he had five meetings on design with the Longworths, after which the architect submitted the custom layout to Resolution: 4’s factory in Scranton, Pa. There, the five sections take about two weeks to build, and some three months of prep time.

Once the house is set on site, about four months are allowed to complete two stages: first, tying together the exterior features, including the cedar siding and trim, and then installing the electric, floors, plumbing and roofing. With standard homes, this process usually takes between eight months and a year, Henry said.

“It’s exciting for people to see how fast their home can go up,” he added.

“My wife and kids are completely stoked,” Longworth said about the prospect of moving in around Christmas.

While he declined to reveal the cost of his new home, upgraded prefabs are generally comparable to site-based homes, but usually are less expensive in areas with more open space for transport and construction, and an average of 20 percent can be saved on building costs, Henry said.

Coughlin said that around 80 percent of Resolution: 4’s business is in the New York metropolitan area (including the Catskills), with the majority of the homes raised in Nassau and Suffolk counties. While the company has been building prefabs for some 25 years, from Maine to Hawaii, the Scranton warehouse has turned out more modern and custom homes in the past decade.

Henry said that prefabs are seeing greater exposure now, and their negative image — particularly that they are identical homes with cheap fittings aimed at a mass housing market — is changing for the better. “And the way they used to come together, and the way they looked in the end,” he said, “you most likely could pick out the modular home on the block. Now, I know for sure that people never expected modular could be done like this.”

Economy Slows Real Estate Sales

By Joseph Kellard


Developer Jan Burman expressed cautious optimism about the Long Beach real estate market after Congress approved a $700 billion bailout bill last week.

The president of Engel Burman Group, a Garden City-based developer of properties from Montreal to Miami, is in the midst of building the Aqua, an eight-story, 36-unit luxury condominium complex overlooking the ocean on Shore Road. So far, Burman has sold six units, including two penthouses that went about $3 million each.

Despite the faltering economy, interest in the Aqua has been “pretty good,” Burman said, particularly among Manhattanites seeking beachfront property closer than the Hamptons, as well as retired homeowners from the North Shore, Five Towns and the boroughs of New York City. Next month Burman plans to display the development’s sales model — featuring units that range in size from 1,730 to 2,400 square feet and start at $1.3 million — and he believes he will have the building fully occupied within a year to 18 months.

“The hope is that once this economic crisis gets resolved, the mortgage money will open up,” Burman said, “because a lot of people who would like to move have to sell their first house to buy the second house, and they can’t sell the house unless there’s some way to get mortgages.”

Like Burman, Long Beach real estate agents who spoke with the Herald last week said the city’s real estate market remains generally stable, but some confessed to uncertainty.

“The Realtors are definitely concerned that they are going to lose buyers,” said Karen Adamo of Century 21 Petrey in the West End. “... The buyers are going to have to be what I would call super-qualified: very good credit, a good percent down and their closing costs.”

Joe Ponte, an agent at Prudential Douglas Elliman on West Park Avenue and a former director of the South Shore Chapter of the Long Island Board of Realtors, called Burman’s 18-month forecast a safety zone. “In 18 months the whole world can change,” Ponte said. “But if I had to predict, the whole market should be robust in that time, because everything should be straightened out within six months to a year.”

Though the mortgage crisis remains headline news, New York state’s foreclosure rate, as of August, ranked 33rd among the 50 states, according to RealtyTrac, an online site listing available foreclosures. Adamo said that while some areas of Nassau County have seen many foreclosures, such as Baldwin and Freeport, the South Shore is otherwise “not so bad,” and on Long Beach island “it’s not terrible” — though those words hardly inspire confidence.

Today, Long Beach island homes are on the market much longer — an average of about six months — before they sell, most for between $450,000 and $699,000. Ponte said the trend is that people who bought homes before 1980 are holding on to them.

“They’re retirees who find there’s no reason to sell, because they’re all going to relocate to Florida and they’re waiting for a better day,” he said. “They want top dollar.”

Although housing prices have dipped about 6 percent since 2007 in Long Beach, real estate agents are finding that sales of lower-priced condos — and particularly co-ops — are on the rise. “What is not selling in Long Beach are homes, but what are holding their own are condos and co-ops, especially on the ocean,” said Joyce Coletti of Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Many lower-priced condos and co-ops — studios and one-bedrooms — are selling in the $275,000 to $400,000 range, mostly to singles and young couples. “They’re selling because they’re lower than buying a house,” Adamo said.

The Windward, at 251-255 W. Broadway, between Laurelton and Lafayette boulevards, is a newly renovated, less-costly co-op development. The three-story building has 29 units, either studios (400 square feet) or one-bedrooms (800 square feet), that sell for $219,000 to $400,000, Coletti said. She has sold 11 of the pet-friendly units since they were first offered in July. “Really, if someone is looking for a place just to hang their hat for the summer, this is perfect,” she said.

Meanwhile, agents say that higher-end condos aren’t selling as well as their lower-priced counterparts. A case in point is the Riverside, at 125 E. Broadway, between Riverside and Long Beach boulevards.

According to a few agents, the 50-unit Riverside was unable to show a high enough percentage of sales for owner David Shokrian to close on the building, and he has started to put most of the units on the market for rent. Shokrian declined to comment.

Ponte attributed part of the slower sales in high-end buildings to once-willing buyers with $300,000 to $500,000 nest eggs who were wiped out in the Wall Street-mortgage meltdown.

“That money was their money to buy a home or condo,” Ponte said. Ponte compared the Riverside to the Avalon Towers, at 10 W. Broadway, which was built in 1991 as a condo complex but had to turn to rentals when the economy teetered on recession.

“This is history and economics repeating itself almost 20 years later: overbuilding in Long Beach and they couldn’t sell anything,” he said. “They were building all these condos in the late 1980s and there was a boom and then the market fell out.”

Nevertheless, Ponte and other real estate agents believe that despite the present difficulties in the local market, Long Beach remains an attractive locale for many people looking to move. The agents note that the city is rare among Long Island communities not only because of its beachfront property, but also because it has a vibrant downtown with many restaurants and shops, as well as convenient transportation.

“It is still the hot place to move,” Adamo said. “People on the North Shore used to look down on Long Beach, and now they’re selling their big homes and downsizing because they want to be directly on the ocean, and this is what they can afford.”

Gallery Opens By The Sea

By Joseph Kellard


“Oh, when did this open?” a woman asked with pleasant surprise while biking past a West End storefront two Saturdays ago. Her discovery was of a rare species on the South Shore: an art gallery.

“Today at 11 o’clock,” answered Scott Evers, owner of Evers Place, sub-named “A gallery by the sea.”

“It’s beautiful — I’ll have to stop back when it’s not so crowded,” the cyclist said. Sept. 20 was the gallery’s grand opening, and it was abuzz with caterers, curious art lovers and artists eager to sell their works. An estimated crowd of 450 passed through the gallery’s doors that afternoon, some 300 more than Evers had bought food and drink for.

Despite the initial excitement, however, Evers said he understands the risk he is taking in transforming his late father’s home-improvement repair shop, Dan Evers, a fixture at 949 W. Beech St. since 1949, into the first West End gallery in memory. Recent history shows that art galleries have had a short life span, at least in some neighboring towns. Around mid-decade, an Oceanside gallery devoted to Southeast Asian art closed its doors after about two years in business, and a studio in Island Park, which featured local artists, opened last December but is already out of business.

Evers, however, expects that his gallery will avoid the endangered species list. Since it is smack in the middle of the West End’s booming restaurant and bar scene, and with a wealth of artists living in town, he believes he’ll have no shortage of either customers or artists willing to display their paintings, drawings, photographs, collages and sculptures. It also helps that there are a few local groups that promote the arts, including the Long Beach Art League and West End Arts, both of which Evers belongs to, as well as other smaller, niche organizations such as the Artist Mothers Group.

“We have almost an art underground here in Long Beach,” said Evers, a native who was inspired by his father’s World War II snapshots to pick up his first camera at age 6. “We have so many good artists.”

Artists are attracted to the city by its lengthy stretch of seascape as well as Reynolds Channel, which is an “undiscovered country,” Evers explained. Landscape artist Kathleen Regan used to visit a friend in Long Beach and set up her easel on the beach before she moved to the West End 12 years ago and joined the local art group.

At Evers’s grand opening, Regan displayed some of her paintings, including one of a sand dune on the Georgia Avenue beach in 1980 titled “Chauncey’s,” named for and featuring the legendary former bar. “I feel that this is such a blessing for us,” Regan said of the gallery. “I mean, we have so many artists on this barrier island, and this is the first fine arts gallery that I know of.”

Regan and many other local artists have displayed their work in the halls of the Long Beach Public Library or at local gift shops and restaurants, as well as at annual arts fairs around town. When they do get an opportunity to show their work in galleries, typically they have to trek to Manhattan or the Hamptons.

At the grand opening, Michael McLaughlin, a native West Ender who often paints Southwestern scenes, displayed a painting titled “Mermaid,” which shows the sea creature lounging on a crescent moon with a star in hand.

“We’ve never really had something where the artists had a venue to promote their work,” said McLaughlin, whose works have been exhibited in restaurants. “We artists feed off each other, and with Scott doing this it’s a really great endeavor.”

By day, Evers is a corporate consultant who travels nationwide. When his father died last year and left him the shop, he finally had the opportunity to pursue his dream of opening a gallery. He renovated the 1,200-square-foot shop and opened Evers Place with Amy Castillo, who owned Listen To Your Art, a gallery and picture frame shop on Park Avenue.

The works on display range from $40 to $7,500. For $750 a customer can own an impressive piece by Long Beach photographer Jonathan Spector, a poster-size image of a boardwalk bench looking out onto a gold-tinted, desolate winter beach and ocean illuminated by a bar of sunlight piercing through clouds as icicles form on the guardrails.

Evers has also hung some of his own pieces, including “Wharfside,” a digitally enhanced photo of fishing boats lined up at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

Also on display are the collages of Long Beach resident Veronica Schliemann. One consists of torn colored paper in the form of a muscular man lying by a river, titled “Sleeping Giant.” Another, “Nature And Her Vista,” shows a similar giant sitting in a gorge that was created by puzzling together sectional photos of Utah’s Bryce Canyon.

And what would a West End gallery be without an artful surfboard on display? One board sports a painting of a tropical beach, a typical scene by Dan Macken, an international artist who collaborates with Brian Wilson of Beach Boys’ fame. Evers met Macken at an art expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan last year, and invited him to his grand opening.

That kind of networking is part of Evers’s long-range plan to keep his gallery not only breathing, but thriving. He also hopes to attract more Manhattanites, who come to Long Beach on the Long Island Rail Road, to the West End. “A lot of them don’t even know the West End exists,” he said. He plans to focus on Web marketing on Craigslist and other sites aimed primarily at New York City audiences.

“Really, one of the big untapped resources out here is the city,” Evers said.

To learn more about Evers Place, visit the gallery’s Web site, eversplace.com, or call (516) 729-3168 or 208-7000.

City Council creates Michael Valente Day

Salutes Long Beach’s lone Medal of Honor recipient

By Joseph Kellard


Nearly 90 years to the day after World War I veteran Michael Valente rescued his regiment from disaster in France, the Long Beach City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to designate Sept. 29 as a day in his honor.

Valente, who died in 1976, is Long Beach’s lone recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor — the highest award for valor given to a member of the U.S. armed forces for actions against an enemy force — which the infantryman, then a private, earned for heroic acts on Sept. 29, 1918. Just 3,446 such medals have been awarded since its inception in 1863.

“In the City of Long Beach, we want every September 29 to be a day for people to reflect and honor the life and accomplishments of Michael Valente,” said City Manager Charles Theofan, who noted that the council heeded President Bush’s nationwide call to honor the memory of all recipients of the prestigious medal. “… This is the very least we can do to honor him.”

At a May council meeting, Al Symons, a retired engineer who worked for the Department of Defense, requested that the council designate Sept. 29 as Michael Valente Day, to honor Long Beach’s only recipient of the medal. Tuesday night, Symons read to the council a citation from President Herbert Hoover when he decorated Valente, then a retired sergeant, with the medal in Washington on Sept. 27, 1929.“It’s the proudest moment of my life,” Valente said, according to a New York Times account dated the day after.

Valente’s courageous acts came when his regiment, Company D of the 107th Infantry, was suffering heavy casualties during operations against German forces at the Hindenburg line near Ronssoy, France. Alongside a fellow soldier, Valente rushed forward through intense machine gun fire directly on an enemy nest, killing two gunners and capturing five enemy soldiers. Discovering another machine gun nest nearby that rained heavy fire on American forces, Valente and his companion charged it, killed the gunner, jumped into the enemy trench, killed two more soldiers and captured 16 others.

On Tuesday, Symons thanked the council for creating the day to honor Valente. “You have no idea how happy I am that you are taking this resolution at this time,” Symons said to the applause of the crowd. Among those in attendance were Valente’s great-granddaughter, Danna Cuneo-Wojcieski, who was born two years after he died at age 80 on Jan. 10, 1976. “I think it’s an amazing honor,” she told the Herald.

“He was obviously a courageous man in World War I, and we’re so proud that he’s part of our family.” Francesca Capitano, a former councilwoman, remembered growing up two house down from Valente on Walnut Street — before she married his grandson, Ralph Madalena.

“He was a great man, a kind man, a good father, a good grandfather,” she told the council with her husband and daughter, Katherine Madalena, at her side.

Valente emigrated from Italy to Ogdensburg, N.Y., in 1915, and joined the New York Guard. In May of 1918, he was deployed to France to fight on the front lines. After the war, he married Margareta Marchello and moved to her native Newark, N.J., before the couple settled in Long Beach around 1919, where they raised three children.

Valente became a contractor and real estate agent who built houses in Long Beach, but eventually gave up the business to work in City Hall as the city marshal. When he retired in the 1960s, he greeted people at La Serenata, a restaurant at the original Long Beach Library, now the site of Sutton Place.

Standing 6 feet tall with blond hair, blue eyes and a barrel chest, Valente was always active, particularly in his garden, and he rode his bike on the boardwalk regularly right up until his final years.

“My father was very proud, but he didn’t talk about it much,” Valente’s daughter, Lido Beach resident Josephine Cuneo, said of the Medal of Honor. “He was wonderful, kind and soft-spoken. Unless other people told us about the medal, we would never have known.”

Frank Cuneo, Valente’s grandson, said he could not recall his grandfather ever talking about the war or his medal. He said he believes that Valente’s legacy was never properly passed down, and he was satisfied that a Long Beach resident like Symons spearheaded an effort to create a day honoring his grandfather.

The Long Beach Public Library used to display a facsimile of Valente’s medal (Madalena has the original), and a portrait of Valente wearing it hangs in City Hall.

“I remember as a kid I used to march and ride in a car with him in the Memorial Day parade,” said Cuneo, who now lives in Manhattan. “Everyone would stop and greeted him. He was well known in town.”

The city named one of its senior apartments, near City Hall, after Valente, as did the Sons of Italy lodge he attended. Some of the lodge’s members attended the meeting to thank the council for recognizing him.

Before the council voted on the resolution, its members consulted with some local veterans’ organization to get their input. Valente was most active in the VFW Post in Long Beach. “I think it’s fabulous to have the day named after him,” said Scott Castillo, the VFW’s senior vice commander. “He’s the only Medal of Honor winner in Long Beach, and it brings all veterans recognition. I’m all for it.”


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and commentator living in New York. Contact him at Theainet1@optonline.net.

Blending Fires, Fact and Fiction

West End man writes first novel, dedicated to Long Beach 9/11 victim


By Joseph Kellard


Gene Welischar has quite an imagination.

In his soon-to-be-published first novel, "If You Play With Fire," the retired FDNY chief and longtime Long Beach resident puts himself in a fantasy romance with an ex-nun-turned FBI agent. The two meet when she visits his Manhattan firehouse to investigate a real-life arsonist who burned buildings for hire.

Much of Welischar’s story, which explores how firefighters battled blazes in Brooklyn and Queens in the 1960s and ’70s, is based in fact. During those turbulent decades he was in the midst of a 33-year career with the FDNY in a city threatened by political, economic and physical collapse. He writes of the riots and fires that followed Martin Luther King’s assassination; "Jewish Lightning," a variety of arson that lined the pockets of failing businesses with insurance payouts; and "Danny O," a professional, mob-connected arsonist who torched apartments for property owners unable to get ride of stubborn tenants so they could build high-rises.

"Danny O has had a lot of work from the new builders who want fast access to the space occupied by these old buildings for their business ventures," Welischar, 78, writes in the novel’s prelude. "… He prefers that no deaths or injuries will result from the fire, but only because that could bring serious investigation." During one arson in 1978, Danny O, who stood on rooftops to watch his blazes rip through buildings as fire units arrived, observed from a distance as a firefighter was loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher.

Eventually — and, again, factually — the FBI sent agents to the firehouse where Welischar was captain from 1976 to 1983, Ladder 13 on 85th Street, to look up records on recent arsons. One of the real-life federal agents, Marita Lorenz, had reportedly been sent to Cuba in 1960 to attempt to seduce and then poison Fidel Castro in 1960. Welischar dated her a few times, he said.

In the book, Lorenz morphed from fact into fiction, becoming, in Welischar’s imagination, an agent who grew up Catholic and became a nun. But her father, a Protestant policeman, wanted grandchildren, so she left the clergy to start a family. "But she couldn’t," Welischar explained, "so then she looked for a surrogate father and she happened to pick me, the captain of the firehouse." At this he laughed mischievously. "I have a great imagination. My daughter said, ‘Dad where did you get all this stuff from?’"

The real-life FBI agents were pointed to a certain management company that was eventually prosecuted, but Welischar’s search to find out how the investigation unfolded hit a dead end, because the company had changed its name.

For years, Welischar, who retired in 1991, had rehashed those eventful decades, and three years ago he decided to explore them again. He began writing "If You Play With Fire," with editorial help from his wife, Patricia. Welischar took his completed novel to Florida and enrolled in a writing course given by Patrika Vaughn, owner of A Cappela Publishing. Vaughn found his story intriguing enough to print 3,500 copies.

"I thought it would be extremely interesting to the lay person to see how firefighters operated, especially with the malfeasance of the city government during the ’60s and ’70s," Vaughn told the Herald. "I found it a wonderful story."

While the novel is populated with corrupt government officials, unscrupulous businessmen seeking shortcuts to obtain prime real estate, and arsonists, Welischar also profiles a few heroic life- and property-saving characters, the informal leaders who train and inspire their fellow firefighters. "They’re like the unsung heroes of the fire department," Welischar said. "They’re like the infantrymen of the firehouse. They’re teachers who break in the new men and shape the character of a firehouse."

Welischar dedicated the novel to the late Greg Stajk, a probationary firefighter whom he mentored at Ladder 13 in 1982. While still with the company on Sept. 11, 2001, Stajk, then a 14-year resident of Long Beach, was killed at the World Trade Center.

Welischar got to know Stajk through his daughter, Mary, calling him a big brother to her. "He was a low-profile guy who was nice to be around," Welischar recalled. "All the guys loved him. And I found out later that he was a terrific artist."

Stajk’s mother, Marge, who lives in Florida, said she was honored and surprised by Welischar’s tribute to her son, and read a rough copy of "If You Play With Fire." "It was interesting to see how the novel switches back and forth between real-life human-interest stories and fiction," Marge said.

Welischar began his career as an NYPD street patrolman when he came home from the Korean War, before joining Ladder 116 in Long Island City in 1958. From there he went to Engine 218 in Bushwick, where he became a lieutenant, and then to Ladder 13. In 1983 he transferred to Engine 264 in Far Rockaway, where he retired eight years later.

Welischar moved to Long Beach in 1977, and in 1989 he bought The Inn on West Beech Street, where he held fundraisers for veterans at Northport Hospital. The generosity of his adopted hometown figures in the novel.

"Whenever someone is in trouble, they have benefits at bars and raise thousands and thousands of dollars for people who have gone through tragedies," Welischar said of Long Beach, where he will sell and sign copies of his novel at the Irish Day Parade next month. "There are at least 20 that I can remember in which money was raised for people in distress. And that’s something about Long Beach: It’s a very tight-knit neighborhood."

For information or to purchase "If You Play With Fire," go to www.ifyouplaywithfire.com.


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Close In More Ways Than One

Walks residents say area is tight-knit, safe



By Joseph Kellard


On a sun-soaked July afternoon, Matt Mariano and a friend tossed a football around outside Mariano’s July Walk bungalow. A game of catch was about all there was room for, since a narrow sidewalk is all that divides the houses in Long Beach’s historic Walks community.

The 10 blocks of walks have no street access, and Mariano’s lawn spans perhaps 5 yards, much too small for a scrimmage. But what Mariano and fellow homeowners lack in asphalt and backyard space, they make for up in neighborly intimacy, whether it’s picking up groceries for one another or shoveling snow together to clear a path to the surrounding streets.

“It’s a little more communal because of the close proximity of the homes,” said Mariano, a 20-something who grew up in Levittown, teaches in Amityville and moved to July Walk two years ago. “And that makes for a better neighborhood.”

The bungalows on each walk face east and west and are sandwiched behind homes facing north and south from West Park Avenue, the neighborhood’s northern border, to West Beech Street to the south.

The walks themselves run north-south, from Lindell Avenue, the eastern border, to New York Avenue. The homes are little more than arm-spans apart, and their “yards” are best described as patches of grass.

“You really become very friendly with your neighbors,” said Allison Kallelis, who moved from Yonkers to Long Beach with her husband, Alex, six years ago and bought a September Walk home for $260,000. “I know everyone in the surrounding area. So you have to be extremely friendly to live here. If you’re not, then it’s not for you.”


A changing neighborhood

Kallelis said she can’t imagine ever selling their bungalow, where they will raise Kaleb, their 9-month-old son. When they first arrived, their neighbors were mostly retirees, many of whom have since left the neighborhood, replaced by other young couples.

Kallelis finds the walks safe, and said that children can play along the sidewalk without worrying about cars, and strangers rarely wander through the neighborhood. But above all, she said, she cherishes the neighborly camaraderie.

“As people walk down the walk, they yell out, ‘I’m going to the grocery store, what do you need?’” Kallelis explained. “That’s very common here. We borrow eggs and everything from each other. It’s a godsend to have the neighbors so close and so friendly.”

Homeowners make the most of their small properties, lining their front picket or chain-link fences with flowers while leaving their backyards barrier-free, blurring the property lines. Glyn and Kelly Jaime, who live on October Walk, have a fenceless backyard that mingles with their neighbors’ concrete plots. Having a yard is something new for Glyn, who was born and raised in Greenwich Village and has always lived in Manhattan, where she and her husband work.

“In our building in the city, we have about five apartments in our own little corner,” said Glyn, who owns a package design company. “We don’t even know those people. I’m not kidding, we’ve been there five years and I’ve never even seen them. Here we know the families around us, we know everybody. The neighbors here are incredible. It’s a real sense of community, but it’s not like people are in your face.”

While they were house-hunting, the Jamies looked at some 25 Long Beach properties before discovering the Walks. They were instantly sold on the area, and bought a single-level bungalow built in 1928 by Louis Bossert, a Brooklyn lumber producer who developed the second wave of homes there after World War I.

The Jamies’ bungalow is typical, with three small bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom. It retains many of its original features: a white stucco exterior, metal awnings, a brick fireplace, a four-legged, cast-iron bathtub, linseed linoleum floors and beaver-board walls. “All these things are what drew us to the house,” Glyn said.

When she and Kelly moved in, the house had been vacant for two years but was filled with cobwebs and sheet-covered furniture, including a vintage 1950s Herman Miller kitchen table and chairs that the Jamies kept, since it fit their retro style. The walls are adorned with a weathered 1938 New York license plate, a midcentury street map of the Columbus Circle area and framed black-and-white vintage photos of Manhattan.

The Jamies have another typical feature: an enclosed front porch that was once open, and caught breezes from the ocean a few blocks south. “The whole design of the Walks was to build houses without street access, but an aside was the terrific breezes,” said Roberta Fiore, a Long Beach historian.

Fiore regards the Walks as the city’s most distinct neighborhood. “I love it because it has so much charm,” she said. “It’s a cute little community with a lot of creativity.”


Military beginnings

The neighborhood was first developed in 1917 and 1918, when the U.S. military took over the Nassau Hotel and Long Beach became a military settlement like Camp Yaphank in Suffolk County, where pre-fabricated bungalows were built for $2,500. They were shipped to Long Beach and installed on property owned by Brooklyn developer and former State Sen. William Reynolds.

The uninsulated pre-fabs were meant for summer use, but for $500 more a chimney could be built. By the mid-1950s, tenants started to live in them year-round. “The expression then was, ‘Throw some heat in the bungalows,’” Fiore said.

By the 1970s, half the homes became permanent dwellings, said Jim Hennessy, a former City Council president who was raised on January Walk. Hennessy fondly remembers the closeness not only of the neighborhood, but also in his family’s bungalow: He was one of nine children. He and a younger sister, two older brothers and single mother occupied the standard three bedrooms, and his five other sisters shared the attic-turned-bedroom.

Hennessy’s mother worked the midnight shift at Long Beach Hospital, and he and his siblings slept around the kitchen oven on winter nights. In the tight-knit neighborhood, the family left their front door unlocked.

“There was a house across from ours where two elderly French-Canadian women lived,” Hennessy said. “If I had to go to the bathroom and one of my other siblings was in our bathroom, I would just run outside my house and use Jean and Isabella’s bathroom. That’s what it was like. It was really close and a lot of fun.”

Fun for Hennessy meant running with friends through stretches of then mostly wide-open yards, throwing a football across a few lawns and jumping from one rooftop to the next while playing hide-and-seek.

In 1984, Pat Redinger moved to June Walk because it reminded her of the old Courts community in the Rockaways, where she spent her summers as a girl. She and her mother paid $100,000 for a pre-fab bungalow that still looks out onto an open yard. To create more space, Redinger converted a boiler room into a storage closet, and she uses corner-fitting furniture.

Another challenge that comes with living in the Walks is parking. The neighborhood is without street access, driveways or garages, so it can sometimes be “impossible to have company over,” Redinger said.

“And to move the car, you feel you may never find another spot.” The Walks also has periodic water pressure, drainage and sewage problems.


Looking to the future

While the parking headaches have led Redinger to contemplate a move, others who plan to stay, such as the Kallelises and Hennessy (who lives with his wife and children on West Beech Street, off February Walk), want to lobby City Hall to improve their community. They are hoping to revive the Walks Association, a civic group established in the early 1990s that flourished but disbanded after its founder moved.

“Everyone has their own neighbors association, and we want to have our own, too,” Hennessy said, “because we have to lobby for the things that we need.”

Allison Kallelis is on the same page of what may become a new chapter for the walks. “We’re trying to start up the association again just to get a stronger voice in the city when different planning issues come up, and we’re trying to get more money allocated to the Walks,” she explained. “We’re kind of like the forgotten neighborhood.”


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.