Exhibit Provides Glimpse Into Five Towns Past

Millicent Vollono pointed at pictures on the walls showing children buying ice cream and people getting off the train and going about their daily lives in the Five Towns. However, the people in the photos travelled on dirt roads, explored woods close to their homes and paid only around $4,000 for their houses.

Vollono, who is the reference librarian and music specialist at the , was showing off some of the works that make up the library's local history exhibit, which runs through Dec. 12.

"I've just fallen in love with the place as it was. It must have been so beautiful," she said of the Five Towns. "Imagine the whole place like the Woodmere docks — no towers. It looked like an upstate town you drive through without giving it a second thought."

Vollono has spent the past five years studying old photographs in the library's collection and speaking with residents who have lived or whose parents lived in the Five Towns over 50 years ago. Her work culminated in the 2010 book, "The Five Towns," which looks at the area's history. Now, members of the community will have a chance to catch a glimpse of the neighborhoods before the development of the Far Rockaway line helped grow the area into what it is today.

"It was very interesting to see how it's changed over the past 40 years," said Constance Levine, a North Woodmere resident who has lived in the area since 1970 and was checking out the exhibit. "It has changed tremendously. In a way it's a little sad because there was so much land and landscaping. Now it's all congested."

Technology played a big part in preparing this mirror to the past. The library had photos from the late Max Hubacher, a local who was chemist for Kodak, and negatives from Wallace Small, another deceased Five Towns resident, sitting in a filing cabinet for years. Once Vollono took over local history duties, she digitized the photos. The best ones were reproduced for public consumption. She also purchased old postcards and even a fork from a long-gone Five Towns hotel to add to the collection.

"The photos that are up are the most vivid and evocative of the history of the place," she said. People should see the exhibit "to catch a glimpse of life that we won't see again in this part of the world."

The display also features works by Edward Maday and Jim Boosin, both of Woodmere, whose families have lived in the area for generations.

For Maday, the exhibit was a loss of innocence when it showed him the reality of the history of the Five Towns. "My vision of Woodmere was this bay community where people did things by hand," he said. "What I take away from the exhibit was this area was a resort area, a playground for the wealthy that came from New York City who came to vacation for the summer."

Maday made a viola d'amore for the exhibit out of wood from a tree at what used to be Woodmere Elementary School, and used an oyster from Woodmere Bay as its centerpiece.

Boosin, a retired Nassau County police detective and firefighter, carved wood models of old Woodmere bay houses for the exhibit based on his memories and imagination. "If you look at some of those pictures you can see what the Five Towns really was like," he said. "It was a great place and it still is, that's why I'm still here."