Meanwhile, In the Village
That probably was more than enough about railroading for you - but in a way, that was the point. The people who had to live with the changes must have got fed up, too.
As can be seen below, by 1914 there was growing demand for real estate in central Hicksville - and the LIRR was would acquire still more. To get an idea of the railroad's "thickening," look at how close the tracks were to the original part of the Grand Central Hotel in 1873 (circled on both this and the earlier map) as opposed to 1914.
Central Hicksville
1914 Belcher-Hyde Atlas of Nassau County, pages 99 and 100 (excerpt)
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e4-3ac2-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Other things also were working to squeeze existing real estate. The change from agrarian to suburban living had begun; there were more people, and most of them wanted to live close to the railroad station. The rise of the automobile already was creating the need for parking lots; roads had to be paved and widened, to accommodate more traffic and more parked vehicles.
For a while, the north of the Triangle looked the same (if slightly narrower once the roads were paved), but people who lived in the area noticed qualitative changes. With more potential workers living in the village, and with better rail freight services, small industry was growing. There also were new retail businesses, like car dealerships and garages. Business was penetrating further into Jerusalem Avenue, and the old, established families in the Triangle area started to think about relocating.
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When the camel's back breaks, the final straw is no more to blame than the first.
Old Wencerian Proverb
Enough finally became enough.
In the deepest hour of a December night in 1914, an extraordinary event occurred. With no warning, a structural failure caused the LIRR's water tank to spontaneously explode. 50,000 gallons of water crashed straight down into the Triangle, noisily triggering a short-lived tsunami. The sound awakened people throughout the village, but to those who lived nearby, noise was not the concern. A number of houses did not withstand the wave and were flooded, including the home of Charles Fassbender of the Bank of Hicksville.
Charles E. Fassbender, Founder, Bank of Hicksville
Hicksville Public Library Digital Images at https://nyheritage.org
(digitally modified by the author)
Despite protests from some townspeople and the local press, the railroad promptly replaced the old tank with another one, constructed in precisely the same place. It did not help the railroad's image that in January, three weeks after the disaster, the hastily-built replacement sprang a leak. A thick, irregular, monolithic ice sheet covered the breadth of Jerusalem Avenue, rendering it impassable.
Those three weeks likely accelerated change in the Triangle. Long-time residents began to move. House-mover Frank Kunz had unexpected work. He moved one house to West Marie Street (a street which people now thought more fashionable), to be extensively renovated. A second structure was moved to a new address on Jerusalem Avenue, further from the water tank than before. Repairs on the Fassbender house would not begin until June, as a lawsuit for damages had to be settled first. Regardless, the Fassbenders moved a few blocks east.
Although Depot Square was still used, it now was less suitable for concerts or events that required a solemn dignity. Traffic and train noise was louder and more frequent. With more industrial properties nearby, and with fewer houses, gardens, and trees, it was less pastoral. The infamous water tank loomed over it. Furthermore, a gate tower - the lookout point for the person who remotely raised / lowered the crossing gates on Broadway and Jerusalem Avenue - had been nibbled into the Square. Today, the tower might look quaint to fans of c.1900 railroad architecture, but I'd wager that the villagers of the 1920s found little appeal in its being there.
Depot Square c.1920; at left is the tower used to control the crossing gates.
http://www.trainsarefun.com/lirr/hicksville/hicksville.htm (digitally modified)
The photographer did what s/he could to hide the unsightly water tank, but a
corner of it can be seen poking up behind the upper-right edge of the boulder.
But where else in the center of Hicksville was there a suitable public space?
Thus, during World War I, the village's Service Flag banner was proudly raised in the Square, so that everyone who came through downtown Hicksville would see how many young people the village had sent to war. Afterwards, the War Monument was put there, and the oaks were planted there, in the belief that Depot Square would always be at the village's core. Year after year, it grew less and less special. Prophetically, one of the three oak trees withered, possibly from the incessant exposure to the fumes of railroad and traffic.
By the end of World War II, everyone agreed that the Square was not the place to put the next monument. A dignified, quiet corner of the High School grounds, not very far away on Jerusalem Avenue, was chosen, and in 1947 the boulder was transported south to be with it.
Thanks to the magic of bulldozers and asphalt, Depot Square soon receded into oblivion. In its place, Hicksville got a new diner. Ironically, its damage done, the LIRR water tank soon disappeared as well: in 1955, the railroad stopped using steam locomotives, and it had the tank demolished.
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