Floral Park Map
Floral Park is an incorporated village in Nassau County, New York, United States, on Long Island. The population is 16,800. The village is at the western border of Nassau County, and is located in both the Town of Hempstead and the Town of North Hempstead. The neighborhood of Floral Park, Queens, is adjacent to the village.
The area that is now Floral Park once marked the western edge of the great Hempstead Plains, and by some reports was initially known as Plainfield. Farms and tiny villages dominated the area through the 1870s when the development of the Long Island Rail Road and Jericho Turnpike cut through the area. Hinsdale had more than two dozen flower farms after the Civil War. The present-day village of Floral Park was once called East Hinsdale.
In 1874 John Lewis Childs arrived in the area to work for C.L. Allen as a seed seller. After building his own seed and bulb business and starting America's first seed catalog business, Childs bought a great deal of land in the area. To promote his own business and the local horticultural industry, Childs named the local streets after flowers and renamed the area Floral Park. The expansion of the Floral Park Post Office and nearby village businesses are attributed solely to the success of Childs' business. When the local Post Office took the name Floral Park, the Long Island Rail Road followed suit by changing the name of the East Hinsdale station to Floral Park in 1888. Formerly part of Queens, Floral Park became part of the new county of Nassau in 1899, and it was incorporated as a village in 1908. Childs served as its first president starting that year.
Nearby cities include Bellerose, New Hyde Park, Elmont, Franklin Square, Bellmore.