Remembering John H. Dunn

The U.S. Tennis Association recently awarded John Dunn, founder of Hempstead Lake Indoor Tennis in West Hempstead, the Hy Zausner Lifetime Achievement award.

Dunn, 90, of St. James, has been on the Long Island tennis scene for more than seven decades. He was born in Montreal, Canada, and raised in South Hempstead with a tennis court in his backyard. Dunn first began playing tennis in the 1930s and played for Southside High School, in Rockville Centre, in the 1940s on their undefeated championship tennis team.

After serving in World War Two, Dunn returned to Long Island to teach multiple collegiate tennis championships. Later, he partnered with the late Paul Lynner and won numerous local and national tournaments. Dunn was well known on Long Island as a tennis professional and US Open qualifier.

Dunn was the first tennis pro that Hempstead Lake State Park hired, and he ran the tennis program, set up clinics and maintained the courts. He was known for his innovative style and many of his students went on to play the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. In 1970, he founded, with the help of his partner, the Hempstead Lake Indoor Tennis in West Hempstead, which was the first indoor tennis facility on Long Island's south shore. Since it was opened, the club has served tennis stars such as John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis and tennis coach Ron Holmberg. The facility can still be found on Eagle Avenue today. Dunn also opened two other tennis clubs on Long Island.

The tennis house is the only remaining structure of the original 400-acre Winthrop Estate in Woodbury, and it recently came on the market, along with a four-bedroom Colonial that was built on the property in the 1960s, for $1.299 million.

The tennis house was built in the 1920s by Henry Rogers Winthrop, a millionaire banker and director of the Long Island Rail Road, and his wife, Alice Woodward Babcock. Their original mansion was destroyed by a fire in 1964, but the tennis house remains.

The estate was one of the elite playgrounds of the Gatsby Era. During their summer on Long Island, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, the duke and duchess of Windsor, played tennis there, according to “An ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ Look at Oyster Bay Estate Life,” published by the Oyster Bay Historical Society in 2005. In the 1970s, the local pro John Dunn owned the property and invited the Jackson Five to play there while on tour, says Dunn’s daughter, Shirley.

The tennis house has 40-foot glass ceilings that offer natural light for daytime play and it is illuminated for evening tennis. The red clay court also has a heating system for playing in the winter, and the building includes ladies’ and men’s changing rooms.

This 1970 wedding announcement in The New York Times records the marriage of C.J. Dunn to Lynda Gunther. The announcement documents the previous owner of the Woodbury tennis house — the same John Dunn who hosted the Jackson Five and many of the day's elites and performers on the estate's red clay courts.

The article further verifies Dunn's standing as a tennis professional: he played as a professional in the US Open when the tournament was held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens — the historic home of the championship before its move to the USTA National Tennis Center.