Power Shortage in Hunters Point

August 23, 2013, 8:00 am

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This big building with its tall arched windows and massive granite base at 2nd Street and 51st Avenue was built by McKim, Mead and White beginning in 1903 and was completed in 1909, the year before the firm finished Manhattan’s classic Pennsylvania Station. The powerhouse was built when the Long Island Rail Road deemed it necessary to electrify most of the western portion of the railroad in Queens and Nassau Counties in preparation for the opening of the East River tunnels leading to the new station. Over 9,500 piles were driven in the generating plant’s construction; when finished the plant supplied 11,000-volt 25-cycle, three-phase alternating current to substations. 625 volts of direct current are carried on the LIRR’s third rails. While the destruction of Penn Station in the 1960s is correctly described as one of NYC’s greatest architectural losses, this unheralded masterpiece still stands. Unfortunately, its four ebony smokestacks, featured in… Read More

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King Manor and the Legacy of a Revolutionary-Era Patriot and Abolitionist

August 27, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Queens’ Old Street Nomenclature Lives On — Sort Of

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Jamaica is one of Queens’ three oldest neighborhoods, along with Newtown and Flushing, and it’s no surprise that those three neighborhoods have the lion’s share of colonial-era buildings and locations. In 1655, Dutch settlers purchased acreage from the Canarsee Indians in the general neighborhood of the now-vanished Beaver Pond and set up a small community they named Rustdorp (“peaceful village”). By 1664 the Dutch had surrendered their holdings in New Netherland to the British, who renamed Rustdorp as Jamaica, an English transliteration of “Jameco,” the Indian tribe that lived near what is now called Jamaica Bay. Jamaica originally included all lands south of the present Grand Central Parkway (which explains why Jamaica is so far away from Jamaica Bay).   The Rufus King Mansion, more properly, King Manor, stands on Jamaica Avenue and 153rd Street. It was originally built in 1730 along the main route to Brooklyn Ferry at the foot… Read More

Queens’ Old Street Nomenclature Lives On — Sort Of

August 30, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: When Queens Street Signs Were White

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New York City instituted Queens’ street numbering system, in which east-west avenues increase in number from north to south and north-south streets from west to east, around 1915. It was gradually worked into most neighborhoods during the 1920s, though some neighborhoods with a lot of diagonal streets like Elmhurst and Flushing got to keep their old names. Though most streets got numbers, their old names pop up here and there, preserved in apartment building names or subway stations. Above is Grand Court, an apartment at 30th Avenue near Steinway Street (the piano manufacturing family has always had a street named for it in Long Island City, taking the place of 39th Street). When it was built, 30th Avenue was called Grand Avenue. This illustrates a situation that the numbering system was supposed to solve: when avenues in different neighborhoods have the same name. There’s also a Grand Avenue, originally called Grand… Read More

When Queens Street Signs Were White

September 3, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Flushing’s St. George Church Carries On

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Most of Brownstoner Queens readers wouldn’t recall a time when New York street signs were coded by color. Beginning in the 1950s, when street signs were made of porcelain and metal, Manhattan and Staten Island received gold signs with black letters, while the Bronx received blue with white letters, Queens got white with blue letters, and Brooklyn got black signs with white letters. When vinyl signs with metal brackets were introduced in 1964 and quickly spread around town, the old color-coded system was retained. If you weren’t completely sure what borough you were in, you could always glance at a street sign and be tipped off right away.   The federal government got involved with this scheme in the early 1980s, mandating green signs with white letters that supposedly, were easier to read. Rather quickly, the multicolored signs vanished and all street signs became green, with some neighborhoods such as the Financial… Read More

Flushing’s St. George Church Carries On

September 6, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Sohmer Piano, Now Luxury Houses

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In the evening of September 16th, 2010, a large storm front swept through the general NYC area with high winds and heavy rain. The storm was strong enough to produce two tornadoes, one of which struck mid-Brooklyn, the other mid-Queens including Forest Hills and Flushing, leaving toppled trees in its wake. The storm also left structural damage to countless homes and a falling tree killed a Queens woman who had just replaced her husband behind the wheel in a car stopped on Grand Central Parkway. The storm came and went quickly in about twenty minutes, but it will be remembered for much longer than that. It claimed an iconic casualty in the 45-foot tall wooden spire of St. George Church on Main Street and 37th Avenue in Flushing, a town and neighborhood centerpiece for now 160 years. If you look at photos of old Main Street in Flushing beginning from the 1870s until today, the scene changes from a… Read More

Sohmer Piano, Now Luxury Houses

September 10, 2013, 8:30 am

≫ Next: The Welfare Island Bridge Approaches Year 60

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Here in Ravenswood, just south of Astoria along the East River, the skyline is dominated by the massive Con Ed “Big Allis” power plant and Ravenswood Houses, but a walk though its narrow streets reveals surprising remnants of old-time Queens. A Steinway competitor, Sohmer Piano, constructed this factory on Vernon Boulevard and 31st Avenue in 1887, a multilevel factory building complete with clock tower. Its original copper roof was replaced with tin and then painted green some years ago. I first encountered the building several years ago when it was still occupied by the Adirondack Chair Company and spoke with John Pupa, Vice President of Operations for Adirondack. He said that Adirondack no longer heated the building with coal but it still maintained its old Hewes and Phillips coal-burning oven and took coal deliveries. From Made in New Jersey by John Cunningham (1954):  Hewes & Phillips were Newark’s major machine maker throughout the nineteenth century. Both partners, J.… Read More

The Welfare Island Bridge Approaches Year 60

September 13, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Queens Is Quite Normal in Briarwood

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Though Roosevelt Island is technically a part of Manhattan, between 1958 and 1976 the only way to get there was by a bridge at 36th Avenue and Vernon Boulevard in Astoria, Queens. (Before 1958 a trolley would let you off on the Queensboro Bridge, where an elevator would transport you to the island.) The bridge is still the only way to get there by car or bus. Since 1976, the only tramway in NYC has run from Second Avenue and 60th Street, and subway service was initiated in 1989. The lift bridge (the roadway is rarely raised to allow East River shipping to pass) was opened in 1955 and was originally called the Welfare Island Bridge. The island has had three names in English: Blackwell’s Island, Welfare Island (it was mostly used for asylums, hospitals and institutions until the 1970s) and finally, Roosevelt Island, after Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Kevin Walsh is… Read More

Queens Is Quite Normal in Briarwood

September 17, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Bayside’s Favorite Son, Boxer Jim Corbett

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By all accounts, Normal Road, which runs between Parsons Boulevard and 162nd Street near 85th Avenue, is quite normal indeed — occupied on both sides with one and two-family homes and tree-lined, at least in spots. But by that standard, you’d have to name most of the hundreds of miles of streets in Queens normal. What sets this street apart from the other “normal” streets in the borough? To find out the answer, you would have to go back to late 17th-century France, where a series of schools named ecoles normales were set up as teacher training institutions. Such schools were expected to set standards, or norms, upon which other schools would model their curricula. The first such “normal school” was established in Vermont in 1823, and hundreds of such schools were established in the USA, calling themselves normal schools until the 1920s, when the term “teachers’ colleges” came into… Read More

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Bayside’s Favorite Son, Boxer Jim Corbett

November 1, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: The Dead Within: Cemeteries Within Cemeteries

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Heavyweight boxer Jim Corbett was a Bayside resident. He was champion between 1892, when he knocked out John L. Sullivan in the first-ever bout using padded leather boxing gloves, to 1897, when he lost to Briton Bob Fitzsimmons. He fought 19 professional bouts, winning 11, seven by knockout. After failing in a ring comeback, he turned to vaudeville and the new medium of motion pictures. In 1902, Corbett bought a luxurious home on 221st Street near 36th Avenue and resided there with his wife Vera until his death in 1933. A historic plaque was placed near Corbett’s home in 1971. Corbett Road, fronting Crocheron Park, was named in his honor some time after his death, and Errol Flynn starred in his life story in 1942. “Gentleman Jim” is also remembered by the Bayside Long Island Rail Road station. Ed McGowin’s “Bayside Story,” a collection of bas reliefs on columns and overhead friezes, features a… Read More

The Dead Within: Cemeteries Within Cemeteries

November 5, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Washington, Mason in Flushing Meadows

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The burial grounds of western Queens’ Cemetery Belt are old indeed–most were established by Roman Catholic churches, such as St.Patricks, and other denominations such as the Lutheran Church–well before the Civil War. In some cases, cemeteries were forced to incorporate the burial grounds of founding Queens families. The remains of such families still lie mouldering within slightly less ancient surroundings. Today on Brownstoner Queens, we will risk disturbing the shades and spectres of these ancient spirits, and briefly disturb their resting places. BETTS CEMETERY, within MOUNT ZION CEMETERY, located along 54th Avenue near 58th Street. Mount Zion, a Jewish cemetery, occupies about 80 acres in Maspeth near New Calvary Cemetery and the BQE. It was opened in the early 1890s under the auspices of Chevra Bani Sholom and later by the Elmwier Cemetery Association (Elmwier Avenue is a former name of 54th Avenue). A walk in Mount Zion will produce a surprising and poignant reminder… Read More

Washington, Mason in Flushing Meadows

November 8, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: The Alley Park Windmill

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Both the George Washington and the neighboring Rocket Thrower statues in Flushing Meadows Corona Park are by Boston sculptor Donald De Lue. Strictly speaking, George Washington was not created for the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, but made its first appearance in the park in 1959. In a city featuring many likenesses of Washington, this is the only Washington likeness on public grounds in Queens. The statue was restored in 1999; appropriately, cherry trees now surround the sculpture. Washington is shown in a reproduction of a 1959 statue as First Master of the Alexandria, VA Masonic lodge, wearing his Masonic apron, one of the many symbolic talismans associated with Masonry. Not a few Masonic symbols appear on American currency, and many of the Founding Fathers were members of the “secret” society. Today, the Grand Masonic Hall on Madison Avenue and West 23rd Street boasts some of the city’s most beautifully appointed interiors. … Read More

The Alley Park Windmill

November 12, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Morscher’s Pork Store and the Grimm Brothers

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The image of the windmill plays a role in the history of New York City. Symbolic of Holland, a windmill appears on the official seal and flag of the City of New York; Dutch settlers in old New York used windmills extensively in industry. Surprisingly few old-fashioned windmills have survived in NYC, but in the Alley Pond Park Environmental Center there’s a reasonable facsimile. The Alley Pond Park Environmental Center (APEC), entered on Northern Boulevard just east of Cross Island Parkway, features a variety of short and long trails around the 635 acres of creeks, wetlands and kettle ponds of the park. It was founded in 1972 and is a “learning laboratory” with exhibits on the natural habitats and inhabitants of the park, with over 30,000 schoolchildren visiting per year, but its serenity and separation from city clamor attracts thousands of adults as well. The original windmill in the Alley Park-Douglaston… Read More

Morscher’s Pork Store and the Grimm Brothers

November 15, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: A Little-Known Treasure at All Saints Episcopal Church in Bayside

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Morscher’s Pork Store, at Catalpa and Woodward avenues, recently replaced its old-school neon sign with a bland new model, but thankfully, they’ve kept the whimsical little drawing at left with a German title. Ridgewood in the past was dominated by German immigrants; one by one, German restaurants and delis have been disappearing from Ridgewood and Glendale, but Morscher’s soldiers on.   The German inscription means roughly: ‘little table, set yourself’ and is taken from the Grimm brothers’ classic story “The Wishing Table, the Gold Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack.” The context is a magic table that sets itself: When the tailor was thus left quite alone in his house he fell into great grief, and would gladly have had his sons back again, but no one knew whither they were gone. The eldest had apprenticed himself to a joiner, and learnt industriously and indefatigably, and when the time came for him to go travelling,… Read More

A Little-Known Treasure at All Saints Episcopal Church in Bayside

November 19, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Is Queens’ Oldest Dwelling in Bayside?

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All Saints Episcopal Church, 40th Avenue and 214th Street, looks strikingly different from any other building in Bayside. I used to be able to see its steeple from a window in the building on Bell Boulevard where I worked on the Bayside Times. Local historian Joan Brown Wettingfield: Built in 1892, this beautiful church is not only one of Bayside’s earliest, but contains local examples of reputed works executed by Louis Comfort Tiffany in his Queens studio located in Corona from 1893 to 1924. Over the altar (not shown on these exterior shots) is the triptych window attributed to Louis Comfort Tiffany. Though the Records of the Tiffany Studio are incomplete, church documents corroborate this claim. The window was a gift from a member of the Lawrence family. The Tiffany glassworks building was torn down just last year. Urban archeologists found discarded glass pieces in the rubble, which will be incorporated into a sculpture to be erected in… Read More

Is Queens’ Oldest Dwelling in Bayside?

November 22, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Matthews’ Final Flats Were Built in Maspeth

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It resembles many of the homes in the area, but renovations over the years have changed the original appearance of the Cornell-Appleton House, which some have called Queens’ oldest private dwelling, at 33rd Road and 214th Place. A Queens Historical Society marker says it dates to 1790. However, additional research places the houses’s construction in 1852 — venerable, but not as aged as, say, the Lent-Riker House in Jackson Heights or the Onderdonk House in Ridgewood. In 1905, the house was sold to Edward Dale Appleton, of the Appleton Publishing Company. Appleton’s wife and sister-in-law were on board the Titanic on the fateful night of April 15, 1912 when it struck an iceberg and sank. The two women were rescued and brought to NYC by the Carpathia. It’s not nearly Queens’ oldest, but every house has some history, and this one has more than most. … Read More

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Matthews’ Final Flats Were Built in Maspeth

November 26, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Church of the Transfiguration and the Queens County Hotel, Maspeth

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The streets of Long Island City, Ridgewood and to a lesser degree, Woodside, are occasionally lined with blond bricked Matthews Model Flats, each unit produced for $8,000 beginning in 1915 by Gustave X. Mathews, who is virtually unknown today but responsible for much classic residential architecture in Queens. The distinctive yellow bricks were produced in the kilns of Balthazar Kreischer’s brick works in the far reaches of Staten Island. (The Kriescher and Long Island City stalwarts, the Steinways, were linked by marriage.) These handsome light brown brick homes on Grand Avenue, 82nd Street and Ankener Avenue in eastern Maspeth were the final Mathews Flats built in New York City and were executed by architect Louis Allmendinger in 1930. … Read More

Church of the Transfiguration and the Queens County Hotel, Maspeth

December 3, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Art Moderne Bank in Little Neck

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One of the most beautiful buildings in Queens, the Church of the Transfiguration Roman Catholic Church on Perry Avenue east of 64th Street was constructed in 1962, replacing an earlier church built in 1909 to serve the swelling population of Lithuanian immigrants. A replica of a Lithuanian roadside shrine sits in the church’s front lawn, and the steeple also resembles such a shrine. Lithuanian folk art elements adorn the inside of the church. The Lithuanian phrase above the doors, Mano Namai Maldos Namai means “My house is a house of prayer.” Multiple masses are still celebrated in the Lithuanian language each weekend. Around the corner at Remsen Place and Grand Avenue across from Mount Olivet Cemetery, Grand Florist occupies the ground floor of what was once the Queens County Hotel, built in 1851 to serve farmers from Long Island who were hauling wagon loads of produce to Brooklyn’s Wallabout Market. The hotel was… Read More

Art Moderne Bank in Little Neck

December 10, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: A Trolley Remnant: Tower Square

≪ Previous: Church of the Transfiguration and the Queens County Hotel, Maspeth

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A walk through the neighborhoods of the northern part of Queens, College Point, Whitestone, even Bayside, will reward the urban enthusiast with glimpses of the small Long Island North Shore towns they used to be. There are town centers at 14th Avenue and 150th Street in Whitestone, along College Point Boulevard between 14th and 18th Avenue, and Bell Boulevard between Northern Boulevard and 35th Avenue. The spaces between these town centers, once meadows or farmland, have been filled with block after block of one and two-family homes and seem to have been thoroughly “folded” into a uniform Queens fabric: definitely not the dense, urban feel of a Soho or a Park Slope, but not the thoroughly suburban atmosphere of a Levittown or Hicksville. The two “northeasternmost” of Queens’ neighborhoods, Douglaston and Little Neck, however, have a different tone: they somehow seem carved out of the rather exclusive, monied precincts of the Nassau… Read More

A Trolley Remnant: Tower Square

December 13, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: La Casina, Streamlined Jamaica Art Moderne

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William Steinway, the scion of the piano manufacturing family,  electrified his Long Island City streetcar line, the Steinway Railway Company, and joined up with developer Cord Meyer’s Newtown Railway Company, which extended to Corona, in 1894.  Two years later, the lines reorganized as The New York and Queens County Railway Company  and built a handsome, twin-spired brick depot at Northern Boulevard and Woodside Avenues. Trolleys would ply these roads to Queens’ eastern sections. Steinway had tried to extend his trolley line to Manhattan via two tunnels under the East River in 1892, but financial and engineering problems stymied the project. Steinway’s friend, banking tycoon August Belmont, completed the tunnels in 1907, but they were not to gain regular use until 1915, when the Interborough Rapid Transit modified them for subway use. The IRT built the Flushing Line in increments, finally reaching Main Street in Flushing by 1928. Meanwhile, trolley service out… Read More

La Casina, Streamlined Jamaica Art Moderne

December 17, 2013, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Remembering Flessel’s of College Point

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A marvelous Art Moderne streamlined building front can be viewed at 90-33 160th Street, just north of Jamaica Avenue. It is a 1934 addition to a building constructed between 1905 and 1910. In the mid-1930s, Jamaica was an entertainment hub as the country was emerging from Prohibition, and La Casina, a nightclub, opened here. Its two stepped pyramids flank a marquee-like overhang. It is a rare landmarked building in Queens as only about 75 buildings in the borough claim the designation from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. After the nightclub closed, the building became a swimsuit and beachwear factory for several decades, then lay empty for several years. It is presently home to the Jamaica Business Resource Center, which provides technical and financial assistance to area startup businesses as well as entrepreneurial training for fledgling businesspeople. The building went on the market for $75,000 in 2013. Happily, or unhappily depending on your point… Read More