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A Few Clouds and Breezy Eleanor Roosevelt slept here
Thanks to local students’ research, the site of the first lady’s childhood home could become a landmark
In 2011, three Barnum Woods fifth-grade students embarked on a search for the early-childhood home of Eleanor Roosevelt in Salisbury. Roosevelt, born Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, married Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 to 1945.
After several months of poring over historical documents and consulting experts, the students determined that Roosevelt once lived on the east side of present-day Salisbury Park Drive, near Valentine’s Road, from around 1888 to 1892, between ages 4 and 8. The estate, called Halfway Nirvana, has since been demolished.
The students, Louie Vega, Dylan Meehan and Joncarlo Esquival — now eighth-graders at Woodland Middle School — documented their findings in a research paper they submitted to the New York State Archive Student Research Awards in June 2011, which earned them an honorable mention.
Another result of their research? On April 29, The Town of Hempstead board will vote on whether to officially declare the former site of Halfway Nirvana a historical landmark.
Finding Halfway Nirvana
The students first learned of Roosevelt’s local ties in a Newsday article titled “It Happened on Long Island…,” according to Carrie Cohen, their teacher at Barnum Woods at the time. The websites of both the East Meadow Chamber of Commerce and State Sen. Kamp Hannon also mentioned that Roosevelt had once lived in the local community.
The fifth-grade sleuths’ first lead came from a 2007 article by historian Robert Spinzia in the Freeholder, a quarterly journal published by the Oyster Bay Historical Society, which documented the Roosevelt family’s connection to the Island. Elliott Roosevelt, Eleanor’s father — and President Theodore Roosevelt’s brother — began building Halfway Nirvana in 1887, on 10 acres in Salisbury, Spinzia wrote. Roosevelt chose the location because it was near the Meadowbrook Hunt Club in Westbury, where he was a member. While the home was being built, Elliott, his wife, Anna Rebecca Hall, and Eleanor lived in Hempstead. Eleanor’s siblings, Elliott Jr. and Gracie, were born in 1889 and 1991.
