Roosevelt Field, Inc. - New York

Beautifully engraved uncancelled certificate from Roosevelt Field, Inc. issued in 1932. This historic document was printed by Republic Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company's logo. This item has the signatures of the Company's President, George W. Orr and Treasurer, W. D. Guthrie and is over 74 years old. This is the first time we have had this for sale and it is the only one we have seen.






Certificate Vignette

1930 Report on the Company:

ROOSEVELT FIELD, INC.: Incorporated in New York, Mar. 14, 1929 to purchase in fee Roosevelt and Curtiss Flying Fields situated between Garden City and Westbury, Long Island. Roosevelt Field contains about 391 acres and Curtiss Field, immediately adjoining, contains about 96 acres. Fields are equipped with hangers, offices and storage buildings. Controls Roosevelt Aviation School, Inc.. which operates an aviation school and Roosevelt Flying Corp., which conducts commercial flying activities. During the period Mar. 13 to Dec. 31, 1929, Roosevelt Flying Corp. carried 12,893 passengers.

In Nov., 1929, leased a flying field at West Palm Beach, Fla.. and in Dec., 1929, secured a seaplane base on Lake Worth at Palm Beach, Fla. The Aviation Corp. owns 60,000 shares of the company's capital stock and will cooperate with directors in planning, operating and developing the fields.

Office: North Hempstead, Long Island.

Article from Time magazine - Apr. 1, 1929

Fields. Speculative is stock in airplane companies; somewhat less speculative is stock in flying fields, since though companies may come and go, the flying field remains always necessary. So last week reasoned many an air-minded U.S. investor, offered stock in Roosevelt Field, Inc., at $18 a share. The new corporation plans to purchase in fee Roosevelt Field, L.I. (from which Col. Lindbergh made his Paris flight) and adjacent Curtiss Field, to supply hangars for planes and parking space and a restaurant for the general public.

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Roosevelt Field is where Charles Lindbergh took off on his historic trans-Atlantic flight. The air field was named in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt's son, Quentin Roosevelt, who was killed in air combat during WWI.

Roosevelt Field Mall is now a large, upscale, suburban shopping mall, located near Garden City, New York, on Long Island. It has over 260 specialty stores and four anchors: Bloomingdale's, JC Penney, Macy's and Nordstrom. Previous anchor stores were Gimbel's (succeeded by Stern's) and Alexander's (succeeded by Bloomingdales). The original anchor stores were Macy's and Gimbel's.

When it first opened in 1956, Roosevelt Field was the largest mall in the world. The mall was open-air when it was first constructed. There was an indoor ice rink in the mall in the area in front of Dick's until a renovation in the early 1970's, when JC Penney opened.

Today it is the 11th largest in the US based on leasable square footage (2,146,000)[1]. It is the third most profitable mall in terms of sales per square foot. The national average is $336 per square foot and Roosevelt Fields is estimated near $600.

It was constructed on the site where Charles Lindbergh took off on his historic trans-Atlantic flight. At one time, there was a plaque at the north end of the mall (in the hall that now connects Dick's and JC Penney) that marked the spot where Lindbergh left the ground.

An ambitious renovation of the mall was completed in the late 1990's. This included adding a second level on top of the existing mall structure. Although the mall uses the prestigious Garden City address, it lies just outside of the village limits, and thus is not required to pay taxes to the village. It is within the Town of Hempstead. The mall is ideally located off of the Meadowbrook Parkway, making it easily accessible from the Long Island Expressway, Northern State Parkway, and Southern State Parkway.

History from Wikipedia and Encyberpedia.