Malverne Has Grassy Pond, the Dinky, and One Extra Letter

Grassy Pond gives Malverne’s history a wonderfully local starting point. The village history places it near Hempstead and Franklin avenues and describes a landscape with brooks, streams, reservoirs, farms, and a high water table. That water helped farming, but it also made building tricky. Some house sites had to be pumped for days before foundations could be laid.

Rail added a few stranger layers. In 1870, the Hempstead and Rockaway Railroad connected Valley Stream with Hempstead, with a Bridgeport station where the tracks crossed Franklin Avenue, then known as Grassy Pond. Nearby manure shipments for fertilizer gave the spot the nickname Skunk’s Misery, but the village history is clear that this was not the name of Malverne.

The railroad struggled after accidents and lawsuits. A later line became part of the Long Island Rail Road but was discontinued in 1910. Then a battery-driven trolley from Valley Stream to Hempstead came through in 1911. People called it the dinky.

The name Malverne has its own soft edge. The village history ties it to Malvern in England and to a green mall or park, while the final e remains a local mystery. Farms, water, rail, trolley, and that extra letter all fit into a place that reads more layered than its tidy village streets might suggest.