Long Island's Hempstead Plains, once a vast prairie ecosystem, was the subject of a recent lecture at Stony Brook University. On October 17, historian Jennifer L. Anderson addressed an audience at the Humanities Institute, detailing the transformation of the region from shared common land to privately owned real estate.
Anderson's talk, titled “Transforming Hempstead Plains: The Demise of the ‘Public Commons’ on Long Island,” was part of the Humanities Institute’s faculty lecture series. Attendees included students, faculty, and staff, primarily from the College of Arts and Sciences.
“It was this amazing resource… Everyone who lived in the community had access to it. Whether you were a wealthy landowner with 30 cows or a poor family with one mangy cow,” Anderson said, referencing an 1802 map. “What remains, I guess I would say, is priceless.”
She described how, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the plains served as communal land for settlers in Hempstead. Both Black and Native Long Islanders, despite being largely excluded from formal land ownership, used the commons for grazing and subsistence.
By the 19th century, pressures for private development and changing attitudes about land use led to fragmentation. Anderson noted, “There’s a cultural turn where land that was once understood as valuable because it was common begins to be called ‘waste.’” This shift justified selling and enclosing the land. She documented these changes using historical records and media reports, including promotional efforts by agricultural groups and railroads that encouraged settlement and redefined the land as suitable for improvement.
The major change occurred during the Civil War when Hempstead sold the commons to fund public needs. Developer Alexander Stewart acquired much of the land and established Garden City, resulting in the displacement of longtime residents. “Within a generation, the land that had sustained people for centuries was gone,” Anderson said.
Today, only a small portion of the original Hempstead Plains remains—19 acres near Nassau Community College. This area is maintained with controlled burns that replicate traditional Indigenous land management practices.
Anderson argued that the loss of the commons shaped modern Long Island by establishing patterns of exclusion and property-based belonging. “We think of segregation as starting with redlining,” she said during the Q&A. But she argues it began with access of land defining who could belong to a place.
Audience members discussed topics such as property law and environmental management. Rita Langdon, assistant vice president for communications at Stony Brook University, shared her own family connection to early settlers. Anderson also mentioned she is considering expanding her research into a book.
The lecture concluded with ongoing conversations about the historical and social factors that continue to influence Long Island’s identity.