About Us

This is one village, but part of it is in Manhasset, part in Port Washington and part in Roslyn. It is not unusual to find a resident who pays school taxes to Port Washington, has a Roslyn mailing address and a Manhasset telephone exchange. Some of the long and winding roads in the village cross school district lines, so children living in adjacent houses may go to different schools. There is no public school in Flower Hill, but there is a Flower Hill School. Its in Port Washington.

The name of Flower Hill can be traced to the earliest documents recording dwelling places in the area. These records date back to the early 18th century, when the village consisted of several residences and other buildings located where, today, Port Washington Boulevard, Bonnie Heights Road and Country Club Drive intersect. In those early days, Flower Hill also included a general store, a tavern, a blacksmith shop, a village well and a cemetery.

This was the village that served the farmers whose land was located along Port Washington Boulevard and extended down to Hempstead Harbor.

Proximity to the water was important because those farms provided not only for the needs of the owners and their neighbors, but shipped vegetables, grain and fruits to New York City from docks in Roslyn or Manhasset Bay.

Three of these original farmhouses are still in existence. The Willets House, on the west side of Port Washington Boulevard, is appropriately enough, the home of the Cow Neck Historical Society. The Williams House is on the same side of Port Washington Boulevard and the Hewlett Homestead is on the east side.

The homestead was build in 1713 and was occupied by eight generations of the family. It is currently the centerpiece of a group of luxury homes called Hemlock Farms. The property was bought by Ivor Markovic who has sold building lots of under an acre each. The large, luxurious houses built on them sell in the $1 million range.

This is big money, even in Flower Hill, but the whole village has been caught up in the real estate boom. According to real estate agent Elida Nellis of Coldwell Banker Sammis, the least expensive house in the Manhasset school district portion of Flower Hill sells in the $400,000 range, while houses on Elderfields Road, Bonnie Heights Road and Manhasset Woods Road can easily command up to and sometimes over $2 million.

The answers to why this is such an attractive community are varied. As its name implies, it is densely planted with flowering trees. In the spring many of the streets are lined with flowering cherry trees, and wild violets abound along the roadsides. There are even some apple trees still standing that date to the days when Flower Hill farms sold the produce of their apple, pear and peach orchards.

The houses built in the area have usually been built by reputable builders with high standards. One of them is Walter Uhl, who began building in 1939 in the Country Club Drive area, erecting colonial style homes in keeping with the older houses and often using beams from old barns in the ceilings of his homes. North Hempstead Country Club is located in the Port Washington portion of Flower Hill and Uhl houses bordering the golf course are much in demand.

The village government, which is headquartered on Bonnie Heights Road, consists of a mayor, board of trustees and a village justice. The positions of mayor and trustees are unpaid and the dedication the residents bring to them is remarkable.

The main reason they give, when asked, is that they like the village the way it is and they want to keep it that way. At village meetings, topics such as one neighbor's annoyance with the location of another's pool house are treated very seriously.

Jim Damascus, the mayor, is genuinely interested in serving his community. Mayor Damascus is an attentive listener and a matter-of-fact, hands on administrator with respect for details. The village clerk is Leslie Ann Taggard, a brisk, efficient woman who appears to have all the answers to questions about Flower Hill.

Driving north on Port Washington Boulevard from Northern Boulevard, one sees St. Francis Hospital just at the beginning of Flower Hill.

In a history prepared for Manhasset's tricentennial, a charming story was told of how it came to be there. In about 1900, one of the farms was bought by Charles Munson, heir to the Munson Steamship Line. One summer evening, the Munsons took a walk. Where once had been a village center, the Munsons saw "the carousing of drunken men wasting away hours at the Inn." Young Mrs. Munson was distressed and asked her husband what could be done. In response, her husband set about to acquire the land, although he had no need for it.

About this time, representatives of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary visited Mrs. Munson to sell some of their hand embroidered linens. A friendship developed and the Munsons decided to offer the property to the sisters. The offer was accepted. The sisters reclaimed the Inn, a Victorian house and made it first into a convent and later into a place where they could bring poor children from the city.

In 1936, Kings County Hospital began looking for a home for children suffering from rheumatic heart disease. According to Dr. Leo Taran, the lack of a place in a rural setting where the children could be cared for minimized their chance of recovery. Dr. Taran met the superior of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, Mother Mary Kevelaer, who was a trained nurse, and St. Francis Cardiac Sanatorium for Children was born. On February 8th, 1937, the first of the children arrived.

Today St. Francis Hospital, The Heart Center, has the highest cardiac case load in the Northeast and the second largest in the United States. In 1997, 2,574 open heart operations, 7,992 cardiac catheterizations and 2,357 coronary angioplasties were performed. St. Francis ranks number one in New York State in its care of critically ill patients. Mabel Munson did not live to see the fulfillment of her dream, "to bring goodness to Flower Hill," but after her death, Carlos Munson took to visiting the hospital to read to the children.

Anyone interested in real estate is familiar with how neighborhood patterns change, but it is interesting to read that shortly after the Civil War, there was concern in Flower Hill that "the neighborhood was going down rapidly." Talk about your clouded crystal ball.