Five Towns

The Five Towns is an informal grouping of villages and hamlets in Nassau County, United States on the South Shore of western Long Island adjoining the border with Queens County in New York City. Despite the name, none of these communities is a town. The Five Towns is usually said to comprise the villages of Lawrence and Cedarhurst, the hamlets of Woodmere and Inwood, and "The Hewletts", which consist of the villages of Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor, and Hewlett Neck, and the hamlet of Hewlett, along with Woodsburgh. North Woodmere is technically not one of the named "Five Towns" but many residents consider it as such because the entire area is served by the Five Towns' two local high schools. The "towns" most commonly included as constituents of the "Five Towns" are all in the southwest corner of the Town of Hempstead.

The name "Five Towns" dates back to 1931, when individual Community Chest groups in the area banded together to form the "Five Towns Community Chest", consisting of Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere, and Hewlett. The organization still exists (as of 2018) as a local charity, but the "Five Towns" moniker caught on as a designation for the entire area. A 1933 article in The New York Times references a Girl Scouts of the USA encampment by the "Five Towns Council, embracing the villages [sic] of Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett", listed in order by LIRR station.

One notable characteristic of the Five Towns is that despite the reputation of the South Shore of Nassau County being more urbanized than the North Shore, the Five Towns retains hamlets that resemble areas along Long Island's Gold Coast on the North Shore with enormous mansions and exclusive private communities along the water.

Communities
There is no official Five Towns designation.

Each of these "towns" has a consecutive stop on the Far Rockaway Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. All five communities are part of the Town of Hempstead. Woodmere is the largest and most populous community in the Five Towns, while Inwood is the second largest community in the Five Towns.

Education
There are two school districts in the Five Towns, the Lawrence Public Schools (District 15) and the Hewlett-Woodmere School District (District 14). Roughly speaking, the Lawrence school district contains all of Lawrence, Cedarhurst and Inwood, and parts of Woodmere, North Woodmere, and Woodsburgh, while the Hewlett-Woodmere district contains all of Hewlett and part of Woodmere and extends partly into the neighboring villages of Lynbrook and Valley Stream (North Woodmere and Gibson in particular).

In addition there are many private schools in the Five Towns, some of these are: HAFTR, HALB, the Lawrence Woodmere Academy, Yeshiva of South Shore and many others.

Five Towns College
Although Lawrence was planned to be the location for Five Towns College, the original site was no longer available by the time the school received its charter in 1972. The college is currently located in Dix Hills, Suffolk County. Other than the proposed original site, the school never had a physical connection to the Five Towns.

Publications
As of February 2019, the Five Towns has a weekly local publication: The Nassau Herald

In popular culture

 * The 1993 movie Amongst Friends, by Rob Weiss, was filmed and set in the Five Towns.
 * The television show Entourage features a fictional show titled Five Towns, in which Johnny Drama stars as a character. The producer of the show was supposed to be actor-director Edward Burns, who in real life grew up in Valley Stream but attended Hewlett High School. When shown on Entourage the Five Towns is oddly portrayed as a gritty industrial area.
 * In Thomas Pynchon's 1963 debut novel V., he mentions the Five Towns; however, he includes Malverne as being part of the group.
 * In the film Goodfellas, when trying to get Henry to come along on a double date, Tommy mentions that his date lives in the Five Towns.
 * Opening scene to "Married to the Mob" was filmed at the Cedarhurst train station (but with the trains going in the reverse direction per the director's decision.)

Notable people
Notable current and former residents of the Five Towns include:


 * Henry Abramson, Dean of Touro College
 * Lyle Alzado (1949–1992), NFL football player
 * Bruce Blakeman, Politician, Member of the Board of Commissioners of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
 * Lil Tecca (born 2002), rapper.
 * Ross Bleckner (born 1949), artist.
 * Jake Burton Carpenter (1954–2019), / founder and owner of Burton Snowboards.
 * Michael Cohen (lawyer) (born 1966), Former attorney and former lawyer for President Trump.
 * Howard Deutch (born 1950), movie director
 * John DiResta, actor / comedian
 * Debra Drimmer, VP of Talent, Comedy Central
 * Gordon Edelstein, Artistic Director of the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut
 * David Friedman, US Ambassador to Israel
 * Jane Friedman, President and CEO, HarperCollins
 * Jeffrey M. Friedman (born 1954), molecular geneticist and discoverer of leptin.
 * James E. Gaffney, owner of the Boston Braves baseball team, winners of the 1914 World Series
 * Lisa Glasberg, NYC radio DJ
 * Barbara Gaines, Producer, Late Show with David Letterman, Emmy Award Winner
 * Rande Gerber, nightclub owner married to Cindy Crawford
 * Brent Glass, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History
 * Louise Glück, Poet, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993, United States Poet Laureate 2003-04, Nobel Laureate in Literature 2020
 * Carolyn Gusoff, WNBC news anchor
 * Joan Hamburg, radio personality
 * Mickey Hart, drummer of The Grateful Dead
 * Karen Friedman Hill, who married Mobster Henry Hill – whose life was immortalized by Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy and Martin Scorsese's 1990 film Goodfellas – hailed from Five Towns, and the newlyweds initially lived there with Karen's parents.
 * Red Holzman (1920–1998), New York Knicks head coach.
 * David M. Israel, TV producer/writer
 * Donna Karan (born 1948), fashion designer.
 * Aline Kominsky-Crumb, comics artist
 * Stan Lee, Marvel comics writer, co-creator of Spider-Man and other comic characters, actor
 * Peggy Lipton (born 1946), actress
 * Steve Madden (born 1958), shoe designer.
 * Gene Mayer, professional tennis player.
 * Harvey Milk (1930–1978), first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the United States, as a city supervisor in San Francisco.
 * Bruce Murray, host Murray in the Morning Radio Show
 * Danny Porush investment banker/entrepreneur
 * Evan Roberts, WFAN Host.
 * Seth Rudetsky, composer, musical director and talk show host.
 * Jim Steinman, music producer, composer
 * Rob Weiss, director/producer Amongst Friends, Entourage.
 * Stuart Weitzman, shoe designer
 * Leslie West (born 1945), musician of the hard rock group Mountain.
 * Alan Zweibel (born 1950), writer / producer.