With the recent release of the movie-musical Wicked, there has been massive recognition and remembrance to the realm of Oz, originally created by author L. Frank Baum. When The Wizard of Oz movie was released in 1939, it spotlighted a talented crew of actors who were the stars of Hollywood from the 20th century. Billie Burke, Oscar-nominated actress from Merrily We Live, played Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz. Burke was a broadway star and a renowned actress on the big screen. In 1910, at age 24, she purchased “The Kirkham” estate but quickly renamed it to “Burkeley Crest,” in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.
Burkley Crest was a home shared by Burke and her mother, Blanche E. Burke. Once Burke had met her husband, Florenz Ziegfeld (a Broadway producer) they married in 1914, and lived in New York City until the birth of their daughter Patricia Ziegfield in 1916. This couple had reporters almost every day on their lawn, trying to witness Hollywood’s “power couple” living in a beautiful mansion in Hastings. This mansion brought communities together.
Natalie Barry, president of the Hastings Historical Society notes the important things Burke has done for the town of Hastings and its community, such as employing people to work on the house. “They [Burke and Ziegfeld] employed a lot of Hastings residents. The gardeners, the housekeepers, the cooks,” Barry said. “They had a little economy going.”
When the stock market crashed in 1929, it put a lot of financial stress on Burke and Ziegfeld. A couple years later, in 1932, Zeigfield passed away, forcing Burke to sell the home. Burke explained, “After she put her house on the market, she had a yard sale where all these tremendously expensive and wonderful things like tapestries made in Europe and gorgeous furniture were sold. This was all put for sale and people bought things for pennies on the dollar. That really helped the community join together with Billie Burke one last time.”
After the sale, Burke moved to Hollywood to pursue the rest of her acting career, meanwhile, Burkely Crest had been taken down to suit the new owners’ wants. Today, the people of Hastings still refer to this property as the “Burke Estate” because of its large impact on the community. “It’s pretty present in a lot of people’s minds and people who grew up here of a certain age remember the Burke Estate, as everyone called it back then,” said Barry.
The school district bought Burke Estate from Anaconda Wire and Cable Company in 1967, a prolific Hastings company at the time that occupied a large chunk of the Hastings waterfront. The district planned to put up a new high school on that land. This was desperately needed because of the recent baby boom that left Hastings High School classrooms filled to the brim. Barry said, “It was so overcrowded. I think they had two sessions of classes because they couldn’t accommodate all the students”. Even though the town passed the bond for buying the land, they didn’t pass the bond for the construction of a new high school. This left the land without a defined use for many years.
Now, nearly every Hasting soccer and baseball match is now held at the Burke Estate. The Burke Estate has also been known to host many soccer games and practices not associated with Hastings High School athletics.
There has been a large proposal to renovate the Burke Estate. The renovation would include a completely new million dollar multisport turf field, lighting, a grand stand for the turf field, improvements to the baseball field, a softball field, a new drainage system for the softball field, parking and a future skate park area (for which the bond has already been passed). If the Hasting Board of Education passes the bond proposal for said renovations, the town will vote on the construction in May of 2025.
The Hasting Student Athlete Committee has gone to great lengths in order to make sure that they can improve the Burke Estate experience in any way they can. Hastings High School Sophomore and President of the Student Athlete Committee Bobby Jennemann said that “we are all working in unison to get this passed”. Jennemann is also hopeful that the committee will be able to “have a campaign at every door in Hastings”. The Hastings Student Athlete Committee has high hopes for the future of Burke Estate and there has clearly been a very large impact on the Hastings community as result of the transformation to playing fields, with even more impact to come.
