The name Ditmars, or Ditmas, appears more than once in the NYC street directory. The Bronx has a Ditmars Street in City Island, while Brooklyn has a Ditmas Avenue through Kensington and namesake Ditmas Park, which turns into Avenue D and then continues as Ditmas through East Flatbush and Brownsville. And then in Astoria there’s Ditmars Boulevard, named for Abram Ditmars, the first mayor of Long Island City, New York, elected in 1870 (the city became a mere neighborhood when Queens became a part of Greater New York). His ancestors were German immigrants who settled in the Dutch Kills area in the 1600s. Ditmars Avenue was laid out in the late 1800s, and during the 1910s — during Queens’ big changeover to a consistent street-numbering system — many busy roads were renamed as boulevards, and Ditmars was one of them. On the present Queens map, Ditmars Boulevard stands in place of 22nd… Read More
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