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from the Foreword | from
the Introduction
Foreword
by Lloyd P. Zuckerberg
The origins of this book took place many years ago and involved
one of my great passions— bakeries. What do Joe Allegue
and bakeries have in common? Let me explain.
When I was three years old, my parents and I moved to Lawrence,
Long Island, a comfortable suburban village that is about
100 years old. Lawrence is adjacent to Cedarhurst, and to
many people the two villages along with three or four others
comprise a community known as the Five Towns. My father grew
up in Cedarhurst and watched it evolve in the immediate post-WW
II years from a small community to a full-fledged suburb.
Every Saturday morning, my father played tennis. But on Sundays,
I was treated to a trip to the Cedarhurst Cake Shop, an old-fashioned
bakery that baked everything it sold "on the premises." It
was just my Dad and me. We always bought more than we planned
to bring home, since we knew we needed something to nosh while
we took a detour on the way home. The detours involved houses.
Other people's houses. Houses to which we aspired. Houses
built with beautiful details. Details like slate roofs and
cedar shingles. Not just simple slates. These were multi-colored
and hand-cut. So too the shingles, which were thick and hand-split.
Many of the houses had beautiful granite schist as an integral
part of their facades. Their detailing included historic elements
found in far-away places like Colonial Williamsburg. And their
placement on their lots indicated extraordinary sensitivity
to how a house fits into the street.
The one thing these houses all had in common was their name.
These were "Allegue Houses." I had no idea who Allegue was.
I thought it was a term used in the same way one would say
colonial or ranch. It was only after we moved in 1971 to a
house built by Joe Allegue that I learned that Allegue was
the name of a man who built houses. And I was to learn that
he built some of the most beautiful and well-crafted houses
in all the Five Towns.
To read the rest of José M. Allegue: A Builder's Legacy,
place your order now.
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