Over 40 years ago, in the late 1950s, the Village of Roslyn was set to undergo some enormous changes. Nassau County officials had hoped to increase access to the Long Island Expressway by widening all the secondary roads that lead to it. That included Old Northern Boulevard in downtown Roslyn.

"Commissioner Clarence Southard of the Nassau County Department of Public Works announced that Roslyn would become a big traffic circle with Roslyn Park in the middle," wrote Roger Gerry to an old Navy friend.

It never happened, and the main reason was the work of Roger and Peggy Gerry, the two longtime residents who are the subject of a new book, Roslyn Restored: The Legacy of Roger & Peggy Gerry, published by the Mount Ida Press in Albany.

Ellen Fletcher Russell is the author of the 159-page volume, which includes numerous photos, many taken by Ray Jacobs, himself a longtime Roslyn resident.

Three years ago, Huyler Held, the head trustee of the Gerry Charitable Trust Fund asked Ms. Russell to write the book. Currently a resident of Frenchtown, NJ, Ms. Russell, along with her husband, lived and worked with the Gerrys in the early 1970s, assisting them on numerous restoration projects. At that time, Ms. Russell had just completed a graduate program at Columbia University in restoration and preservation.

"It was very exciting," Ms. Russell recalled of the restoration work the Gerrys were doing. "And I wanted to be a part of it. I saw it [the restoration work] in action. Plus, I knew and liked the people involved."

Roger Gerry was a native of Far Rockaway, Queens. In 1941, he received his degree in dentistry from the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Shortly thereafter, he enlisted in the US Navy, where he served as a lieutenant for the duration of World War II. While stationed stateside in San Francisco, he met and eventually married Peggy Newbauer, an artist who had recently graduated from Mills College in Oakland.

After the war, the couple lived briefly in Philadelphia before moving to Guam and then to Roslyn, where Dr. Gerry, who was still in the Navy, served at St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens. However, he soon received orders to be stationed in Japan. Finally, in December 1958, Dr. Gerry was transferred back to St. Albans and the couple remained in Roslyn for good.

When Roslyn was threatened with a wholesale makeover (if not destruction) in the late 1950s, Roger Gerry and his fellow preservationists simply had to convince county officials that Roslyn was "so important architecturally and historically that it is entitled to special treatment."

Working with local politicians, the Gerrys pushed for the establishment of both a Village Planning Board and the creation of a "Special Historic District" for Mill Dam, Main Street, and East Broadway. The Gerrys soon began persuading both village and Town of North Hempstead officials to purchase land and historic homes.

In the mid-1960s, the Gerrys would initiate two other important organizations: The Roslyn Preservation Corporation and the Roslyn Landmark Society. The corporation, Ms. Russell said, tackled specific buildings for renovation, by "acquiring properties, completing the architectural plans for restorations, and then marketing the buildings with recorded covenants to assure proper restoration."

Meanwhile, the Landmark Society's purpose was mostly education, namely focusing on the importance of restoration, plus bringing in experts to advise local residents on how to succeed in their goals. The Landmark Society also started the annual house tour of Roslyn's historic homes.

By 1980, the Gerrys estimated that their efforts had resulted in the preservation of 10 buildings in Roslyn and 39 houses. Among those residences were the Valentine House (which for a time was Roslyn's Village Hall), the Van Nostrand-Starkins House (which was built in 1680), and the Warren Wilkey House. Local preservationists often saved a structure by having it moved, as was the case with the Sexton and Hegeman cottages.

By the 1980s, Roslyn was recognized nationwide as a model in the area of building preservation. This was highlighted most dramatically when Roger Gerry received a National Trust Honor Award from then-First Lady Nancy Reagan at a May 7, 1982 White House ceremony.

"Roger had a gift for getting people in gear, for making them feel part of something worthwhile, timely, and exciting," Ms. Russell writes in the book. "Everyone always had an assignment in progress, usually something tailored to his or her abilities, experience and interest."

At the same time, the Gerry's ambitious plans, especially the passage of building ordinances, often met with opposition from local merchants and homeowners, who as Mayor Elias Spielman noted, felt that "a man's home is his castle [and that] 'I should do as I please.'"

Roger Gerry's gift of persuasion usually won the day, but even his closest friends admitted that some people chose not to move to Roslyn because of its strict zoning laws. Because of such laws, Roslyn has remained a small town, an oasis from the traffic and commerce along Northern Boulevard and that fact keeps major developers at bay.

Roslyn Restored also revisits the final drama of Roger Gerry's restoration career. Ms. Russell includes a section on the Stop & Shop controversy, which roiled the village in the mid-1990s.

As Ms. Russell relates, both Roger and Peggy initially opposed the project, before changing their minds and coming out for supermarket construction, a decision that upset many of the couple's allies in the preservation movement. "He took a lot of heat over the project, and people said he's sold out," a prominent resident later recalled.

By 1994, Roger Gerry had been stricken with bone marrow cancer and that condition may have played into his actions.

"[The] most important consideration for Roger may have been the timing," Ms. Russell writes. "He knew he was very ill, and he probably knew he didn't have long to live. The big, vacant waterfront site hung over Roslyn like a Damocles sword that would ... inevitably fall. Why not get it resolved while he was still able to have a hand in the process? Over the decades, Roger had accrued a great deal of authority and influence in Roslyn, particularly in issues of preservation, land-use planning, and design. If the Stop & Shop project went forward in 1995, he reasoned, he would certainly be able to shape it. If it languished, the site would be developed later, when he wouldn't be around to see it through ... Roger Gerry believed that Peggy's and his participation in the Stop & Shop planning would result in the best possible treatment of that most important waterfront site."

The supermarket plan was defeated, and soon, a whole new board of trustees was voted in. The controversy also took its toll on Roger Gerry. In the spring of 1995, the 79-year-old Gerry endured yet another contentious meeting on the Stop & Shop project. Only a few days after that meeting, Roger Gerry perished.

After her husband's death, Peggy Gerry continued to work on certain restoration projects before her own death in 2001. By then, of course, the village's restoration forces were much larger than just one couple. In the past decade, there has been restoration work on Cedarmere, the William Cullen Bryant House, the Robeson-Williams Grist, and the Ellen E. Ward Clock Tower, the village's most famous landmark. Roslyn Park, another restoration that held the couple's attention in the 1970s, was eventually renamed Roger and Peggy Gerry Park.