German immigrants from Wurttenberg settled in what is today Massapequa Park in the 1860s. The area came to be known as Stadt Wurttemberg because of its exclusive German population. In 1868, Clara Wittfelder Dessart and Louis Dessart moved to what was then called South Oyster Bay and built their hotel. Originally called the Prospect Park Hotel, it was renamed Woodcastle in the late 1870s to separate it from the city.
The hotel had a dining room, bar, dance hall and
bowling alley, and there was a general store and beer hall adjacent to it. It
consisted of six single rooms, two double rooms and two suites on the second
floor, and a glass-enclosed cupola, from which guests could see South Oyster
Bay. The Hotel was located on Front Street across from the newly-completed
Southside Railway and was near the Unqua Station (near today’s Grand Boulevard).
Visitors would be picked up at the station and transported to the Hotel by
horse and buggy. They would also be transported to South Oyster Bay if they
wished to swim, to Massapequa Lake to fish, or they could walk through the fields
and woods if they wished to hike or hunt.
By around 1900, Lillian Bryson's grandparents accepted the fact that
the Hotel was no longer profitable and used it as their residence. Lillian is the great granddaughter of Clara and Louis. The family
decided to sell the buildings in 1948. The Hotel was torn down soon after. The
cleared space soon became the Massapequa Park Firehouse.
The Historical Society
of the Massapequas recognized Woodcastle Hotel as an important historic site in
October 2000.
Source:
Kirchmann, George.
“Woodcastle Hotel.” Massapequa, NY Patch, Patch, 8 Oct. 2013,
https://patch.com/new-york/massapequa/woodcastle-hotel
