Excerpt from NY Times, October 6, 1996
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/06/nyregion/once-doubleday-was-a-king-now-house-gets-a-new-look.html
The clanks and squeaks of heavy machinery pierced the summer air in Garden City as a significant segment of Long Island history joined the ranks of the down-sized.
The Doubleday book plant, part of the commercial scene for nearly a century, has been trimmed back. Peeled away from the eastern side was a long warehouse called the tin building, next to which steam locomotives once carted away new books and magazines.
…At the core of the structure on the 18-acre crescent-shaped site just off Franklin Avenue, between Sixth and Second Streets, is the original U-shaped building erected by Doubleday, Page & Company in 94 days. Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the Country Life Press on Aug. 19, 1910…
Here were printed the classics of Kipling, O. Henry, Conrad, Twain, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Lawrence of Arabia, along with countless others…
So glad to see you’re still cranking out the good stuff, Wanswheel. This type material is the one thing I have missed not being around here.
Country Life Press is still an interesting location on what is now the Hempstead Branch of the LIRR as the line threads its way through the area. Probably the most defining and explanatory curve and spot on the branch…Got to do another Ridewithmehenry trip over the route in the next year or two…
Thanks Henry. This thread is dedicated to the late Nelson Doubleday, Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/business/nelson-doubleday-publisher-and-mets-buyer-dies-at-81.html?_r=0
What caught my eye about this was that when my Grandmother, Mary Gilmore immigrated from Ireland in 1930 she worked as a house maid on the Doubleday estate, on the North Shore for a number of years. She often talked about it.
Mike, when I first saw the name “Country Life Press,” I wondered about it–now I know. That is truly an interesting story about the building. It is sad to know that not all of it is needed now–but many people prefer to read something that is not permanent rather that to be able to go to a bookshelf and pick a favorite book up and re-read it.
Before I married, my wife-to-be remarked that she had about a thousand books–and she mailed them all to tme (there’s a story about that), and they were added to the about two thousand books I had. Over the years, we added some, and after she died I had to decide what could be discarded when I moved to the step-father apartment in the house her older daughter and I share (did I ever have to down-size!). Is still regret not taking some of the books I knew as I was growing up. One thing I did keep was the 3 1/2 x 7 foot desk I built for her.
Johnny, that’s impressive. Not everyone so well read can make a desk (unless they’ve read “How to Make a Desk”). I bet Ricki liked her desk a lot.
Mike
I lived in the Garden City area as a grade school kid in the late 1950s. I sometimes took the LIRR from Garden City station to our home near the Nassau Boulevard station. My most vivid memory of the Country Life Press station was the day I tried to take the train from that station. I had the 15 cents in my pocket, that my mother had given me for the train. I knew the (kids?) fare from Garden City was 15 cents, and I thought it was the same from Contry Life Press. There was no station agent, so I asked a track worker who had steped up to the platform what the fare was. He thought it was 18 cents. Thinkng I would put off the train without the full fare, I quickly hiked the 3 blocks or so to the Garden City station. I later found out that the fare from Country Life Press was indeed also only 15 cents.