Vanderbilt Cup Races

Very interesting aside about George Robertson’s portrait should be hung in the future county museum at Salisbury Park.  At the time this article from the Nassau Daily Review Star was written (1951) the County didn’t even own the property that the future museum would be built on. The Tudor style house with 6 acres was owned by Max Staller from whom Nassau Co. bought it for $98,500 in 1955. It was known and referred to as the Staller Mansion. In 1957 plans were drawn for the Nassau Co. Historical Museum by modifying the room arrangement and added a wing to the north side of the building. This building was finally dedicated on June 15, 1961 by then Co. Exec. A. Holly Patterson as the Nassau Co. Historical Museum. Ten years after this article!  It still is one of my favorite buildings to have worked in. As the Librarian at the Nassau Co. Museum Reference Library, in 1985-86 my desk was located on the second floor surrounded by those very archives referred to in the article!

Thanks Gary for the info. on the Nassau County Historical Museum of which I didn’t know had existed.  Must have been an interesting place.  What happened to the museum and its content?  Anything still housed by Nasssu County?  Thanks.

Thank you for posting. My Grandfather, George Robertson, did have a younger brother who died at age 34 but I don’t know much about him. Was there ever a picture that was placed in the Museum of George and where would it be today? Love to see it. Thanks as always for all the great work you do!

I believe the heading illustration is by Robert Patterson (American, 1898-1981), a well known artist and illustrator, and is from a 1952 Ethyl Gasoline advert.

The old Nassau Co. Hist. Museum would later be known as the Bicentennial House, and then as the Museum in the Park. The small brick former garage was also used by the Museum for curatorial and exhibit purposes, before later serving as a workshop for the Park’s Puppet Theater. A memorial rose garden was added, as was the LIRR Steam Locomotive #35 as part of the complex. In the 1980’s there were plans to add a Carousel and also talk of a McDonalds being built adjacent to the complex. In 1986 the Nassau Co. Museum Reference Library was moved out of the building - part to Hofstra as part of the L.I. Studies Institute, the rest to Sands Point Preserve. In January 1991, the building, then known as the Museum in the Park, ceased being part of the NC Museum System. It has since been used my many other NC departments, and at one time by the Woman’s Sports Foundation, although they haven’t been there in a number of years. It still stands near the lake, but now mistakenly called “Lannin House”, something it NEVER was! I assume this was a political decision, done since 2011! Originally it was part of the James Clinch Smith estate, whose home was built there in 1901. By 1923 Joseph J. Lannin owned the property. Lannin died May 15, 1928. He had apparently given the property for the house to his daughter prior to his death. The J. Clinch house was demolished for a new home being built for newly married Dorothea Anne Lannin and Harry A. Tunstall who were married on September 17, 1929. This new, fully furnished home was destroyed by fire on October 15, 1929, the night before the Tunstalls returned from their honeymoon. The present brick Tudor style home was built as a fireproof building as a result of this tragic fire. We know that they held a “housewarming and tea at their new home” on May 11, 1930. It was built by the Tunstalls, not Lannin. The Nassau Co. Memorial Park, which surrounded the property on 3 sides, was dedicated on October 3, 1949. Commonly known as Salisbury Park, it was renamed for President Eisenhower. The artifacts once exhibited in the building were returned to the Museum’s collections storage facility to be used for changing exhibits or on display at other Museum sites such as Old Bethpage Village Restoration. My job prior to my retirement was as the Museum Registrar, responsible for all the Nassau Co. Div. of Museum Services collections (library / archival / historical / biological / archaeological and geological, etc.), including those once housed in the old Historical Museum! Oh, and I checked my records and no, we didn’t have a portrait of George Robertson in the collection.

Reading through Gary Hammond’s comment above, it brought me back to the mid 1990’s. On my 1994 Hagstrom , this location was marked as Museum in the Park. At the time, I planned on visiting there and the Garden City Toll Lodge Museum. I was a bit disappointed that the museum wasn’t there anymore, but the man I met in Eisenhower informed me about the collections being in Hofstra. Never went to Hofstra to check it out, but then headed to the lodge. There was another man visiting the lodge while I was there. We started talking about Motor Parkway, he joked I was bitten by the Motor Parkway Bug; like he was lol.