Growing Up in Forest Brook Acres

My first home on Long Island was in the Forest Brook Acres section of Smithtown. Granted I never knew it was called Forest Brook Acres until later years, even though the school in the area was Forest Brook. One day I found my grandparents’ deed that called it that, and then I heard people looking for a house calling the area by that name.

I moved in with my grandparents when I was nine years old after my parents separated. All of a sudden the place I once visited on vacations was now my home. Moving from Queens to the suburbs left me a bit shell-shocked, but Smithtown turned out to be a great place to grow up.

I grew up on Brook Lane a dead end street off of Brooksite Drive. Many of the streets along Brooksite are dead ends, and they all had, and I believe still have, an opening at the end of the street that leads into Blydenburgh Park. My grandparents used to tell me not to go into the park without an adult, but of course I did. There was one time I went in there with the other kids from the neighborhood and had a snowball fight, and I got hit with one right in the ear. Then there was the other time my friend Nancy and I went into the park with her brother Frankie and his friends. Somehow during our adventure we walked over a log that crossed a muddy stream. Of course, a couple of the kids and I fell off the log, and I went straight to Nancy’s to hose off. Thank goodness when I got home my grandparents were sitting in the screen house, and I sneaked inside to shower off and change before they noticed what a mess I was.

Of course, living on a dead end street is perfect when you’re a kid. When you live on a dead end, drivers, well most, drive slower. Also, there’s less people coming and going. We walked to each other’s houses whenever we wanted, rode our bikes, roller skated and more. Our street was our playground and all the neighborhood kids were friends. I still remember Jessica who was about 10 years younger than us following Nancy and I around everywhere. Back then, her mother didn’t have to worry. She was having fun, and she was safe. The biggest danger for us was Frankie and our friend Jay trying to run over the back of our flip flops with their bikes. Why do boys do things like that? LOL!

It turns out my old neighborhood is more than a place filled with childhood memories, it is also a prime example of post World War II development in Smithtown. A couple of years ago, Smithtown Historian Brad Harris dedicated one of his Smithtown News articles to Forest Brook Acres. Like a number of the homes in my current neighborhood The Pines, a large number of houses in the Brooksite Area were built by the company Dawn Estates. The land development company was run by a lawyer named Bernard Kaplan, and his office, a Dawn Estates model home, sat near the corner of Edgewood Avenue and Jericho Turnpike where Dunkin Donuts is located today.

According to the historian’s article, there was once a large forest from Edgewood Avenue to Town Line Road in Hauppauge. Kaplan acquired 300 acres in this area after World War II, and the Dawn Estate Developers cut a street thought the woods that followed the course of a brook. This was the road that became Brooksite Drive.

The brochures for the neighborhood advertised it as “where peace and contentment dwell”. It was also “where nature made the country beautiful, filling it with vitamins, pure air and other health-giving qualities.’

It’s hard to imagine now, but according to the article there was once a shallow swimming hole that ran along the east side of Brooksite Drive. It’s the area where we find the end of Juniper Avenue today, and a scoop dredge was used to create the hole that even had a sandy little beach. The other day I was talking to a couple of long-time residents, and they said it was so shallow that you would probably call it more a fishing hole than a swimming hole.

Around 1947/1948, the Dawn Estates homes in Forest Brook Acres started out measuring 20’ x 20’ on a half acre lot with an unfinished interior and costing $3,300, according to Harris’s research. Most families living in the bungalows had a kitchen, living room, bathroom, and one bedroom and created a second bedroom in the attic. The dead end streets on the west side of Brooksite were the first to have houses constructed. The first streets were Sunrise Lane, Brook Lane, Shady Lane, Hickory Lane, Twilight Lane and Sunset Lane. Lanes such as Holly, Larch, Lilac, Rose and Forest were added later as more homes were needed. In the late 50s more homes were sold along Brooksite Drive and were sold for $4,999 for the shell that then measured 20' x 24'. If the buyers wanted it to be finished, it was $11,000.

I remember in 1979 my grandparents bought a new car for $7,000 and said it was the same amount as what they paid for the house in 1954. Our home actually had two bedrooms on the main floor, and my grandfather finished the attic that fit a couple of beds and even a cot or two. While it was great for when family came to visit, we still had to pull down the attic stairs to access it. And from the map I found, it looks like when they bought the house it was by then approximately 34’ x 34’. Today the house that the current owners built is probably about three times that size maybe even four times! It looks huge to me compared to the little cape I grew up in and lived in until 1995.

Nancy’s parents still live on Brook Lane, and I’m always amazed when I drive up the road and see how most of the once former little houses have grown. Yet, the tree lined Brooksite Drive with its dead end streets, especially Brook Lane, will always bring back childhood memories of simpler times for me.