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Oral History Interview with Henry Perlman
Audio from Oral History Interview conducted on May 4, 2000.
Transcript of Audio
Nancy: This is May 4, 2000, and this is Nancy Solomon talking with Harry Perlman. This is tape 1 side 1. Now, what was your title all these years?
Henry: From 1976, I’ve been the commissioner of public service, and I retired at the end of 1999. Before that I was a building inspector here and six other villages.
Nancy: And when did you start working as a building inspector?
Henry: 1972. But I’ve lived in Great Neck since 1947.
Nancy: Wow!
Henry: Well, not continuously. I lived in the city for some time.
Nancy: This is going to take us on a whole other tangent, but how did you come to be, were you born in Great Neck?
Henry: No, I was born in 1938, in Manhattan and in those days Great Neck was one of the few communities where Jewish people felt comfortable in living in the suburbs. They weren’t welcome in many areas, as a matter of fact, in Great Neck much of Great Neck, including right here in Plaza, back in the 30s, when most of the single-family dwellings were developed, were restricted.
Nancy: Yes.
Henry: They didn’t even allow Jews to live here. Callon [?] brothers, who built the Wingate area, which is almost 100% Jewish and I’m sure he’s whirling in his grave, I hope, but he did not sell to Jews, as a matter of fact I found an ad from an old New York Magazine advertising the subdivision of Wingate and it said right on it “restricted.”
Nancy: Yes.
Henry: Lake Success was restricted, parts of Great Neck. Interestingly enough, a Jewish builder, the original Levitt, who was a [unknown] of Levittown, built upscale developments, which he called Strathmore, and even he didn’t sell to Jews [laughing].
Nancy: Yes [laughing].
Henry: But Great Neck gradually become a haven for Jews particularly after the war, where Jews who wanted to move out of the city or out of Queens and go to a more countrified place and I guess that appealed to my father.