Queens’ Remaining Redbird

October 7, 2014, 8:00 am

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I’m a subway fan. Not during those times when I’m in NYC during summer rush hours, when it’s 100 degrees down there and have to wait till several trains pass until I can find one to squeeze onto. I’m far from one of those guys who always have to ride in the first car and look out the front window (though I admit I’ll do that now and then) and I’ve never had the slightest inclination to actually sneak in to the yard, jimmy my way in the cab and actually take one for a spin. But, I’ve been on several of the Transit Museum’s periodic “Nostalgia Tours” where vintage cars from the museum actually take to the subway tracks again. The Kew Gardens courthouse area employs thousands of people, but for some, it’s the last place you want to be, whether you’re on jury duty or for those accused of a crime. That’s why, when I… Read More

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Trolley Ghosts in Central Queens

October 10, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Ninety Years of Sunnyside Gardens

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In the late 19th and early 20th century, a trolley line connected Flushing and Jamaica, running originally through the farms and fields of Fresh Meadows. The above image was captured at 164th Street and 77th Avenue in 1936, just a few months before service ended in 1937. In short order, the tracks were pulled up, the weeds paved over, a center median added, and 164th Street became the fast and furious stretch we know it as today between Flushing Cemetery and the Grand Central Parkway. More images of this ilk can be found in the book I wrote in association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens.  Traveling south on 164th, there is a bit of road at 85th Avenue that slants off to the southwest and comes to a dead end. This is called Glenn Avenue on some maps, but it is really a remnant of the New York and Queens… Read More

Ninety Years of Sunnyside Gardens

October 14, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Voelker-Orth Museum and Victorian Garden

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Queens Boulevard in the mid-1910s Sunnyside Gardens, in northwest Queens, was the creation of architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright and the City Housing Corporation led by developer Alexander Bing. Constructed between 1924 and 1928, it consists of a series of “courts” (composed of rows of townhouses and small apartment buildings) built on all or part of sixteen blocks, a total of more than 600 buildings. The designated area also includes the Phipps Gardens apartment buildings, constructed in the early 1930s, and Sunnyside Gardens Park, one of two officially private parks remaining in New York City (the other is Gramercy Park in Manhattan). The large complex is one of the most significant planned residential communities in New York City and has acheived nagtional and international recognition for its low-rise, low density housing arranged around landscaped open courtyards. In the early years of the Great Depression, nearly 60 percent of Sunnyside Gardens’ residents lost… Read More

Voelker-Orth Museum and Victorian Garden

October 17, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Hunters Point Station, #7 Train

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As recently as the 1950s and 1960s, Flushing was a town of old-timey Victorian homes protected by shade trees, with a lively downtown centered on Main Street between Northern Boulevard and the Long Island Rail Road Port Washington line. After Flushing began to stagnate, a slow trickle of immigrants from eastern Asia began to arrive and revitalized the region, but at the cost of its sleepy-town atmosphere as the old Victorians were torn down and apartment buildings and attached homes replaced them. Today, Flushing’s colonial relics, some of which are almost 400 years old, are uneasily juxtaposed with garish advertising and overcrowded streets. Commerce and history are rarely easy partners. The result of Flushing’s revival of the past decades is that it has preserved a few of its oldest buildings from the 17th century, but most from the 18th century and even many from the early 20th have been wiped out. Sprinkled… Read More

Hunters Point Station, #7 Train

October 21, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: They Who Control the Spice: Reusing Elmhurst’s E.R. Durkee Spice Factory

≪ Previous: Voelker-Orth Museum and Victorian Garden

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My interest in subway mosaics has been re-fired again, as it is every few years. I have a new admiration for the intricate mosaics that were assembled on station walls and signage in the subways between about 1914 and 1928 (after the initial Beaux Arts terra cotta and mosaics done in original IRT stations from 1904 to 1914. Station appointments and signage from 1908 to the 1930s were developed by architect/artist Squire J. Vickers, who adjusted his approach over time from the florid Beaux-Arts period through a more mundane period in which subway tiling was more direct and informational, through the even more streamlined Moderne stations built for the Independent Subway from 1932 to 1948. Two underground stations in western Queens (Vernon-Jackson and Hunter’s Point), belonging to the IRT Flushing Line, have acquired more importance in recent years as the surrounding area becomes more built-up. A third station, Court Square, is the site of a recent… Read More

They Who Control the Spice: Reusing Elmhurst’s E.R. Durkee Spice Factory

October 24, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Riis of Richmond Hill

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If you ride the Long Island Rail Road Port Washington line as I have every day for the past couple of decades, no doubt you have noticed the four-story brick factory on the south side of the tracks the train roars past on 94th Street, about midway between the Woodside and Shea Stadium (now Mets Willets Point) stations. Well, I did, anyway, because I had noted the long-unused train siding, one of the last remaining vestiges of a time when the LIRR was used to move freight. I’m happy to report that the old factory has, instead of being razed for more “Fedders specials,” has been reinvented for the 21st Century as a building housing three high schools. From Peter R. Simmons, Gotham Comes of Age: New York Through the Lens of the Byron Company, 1892-1942: “Eugene R. Durkee founded a [salad dressing, spice and condiment manufacturing] company in 1851, and by 1857… Read More

Riis of Richmond Hill

October 28, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: A Queens Mile Marker

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Jacob Riis triangle, 85th Avenue at 117th Street Danish-born crusading journalist and photographer Jacob Riis (1849-1914) made his home in Richmond Hill, Queens, beginning in 1886. In 1887, Riis photographed the squalid, inhumane conditions prevalent in New York City’s tenements, and his 1890 book “How The Other Half Lives” has become an influential text to the present day. His cause was taken up by Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who encouraged legislation that would help ease the burden of NYC’s poorest. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash in photography. In his autobiography Riis wrote of finding Richmond Hill: “It was in the winter when all our children had the scarlet fever that one Sunday, when I was taking a long walk out on Long Island where I could do no one any harm,… Read More

A Queens Mile Marker

October 31, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Exploring Baisley Park, South Jamaica

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I am a milestone maven, eagerly seeking out the mile markers placed in the colonial and postcolonial eras along major roads. In early 2013 I found out about the Post Road 12-mile marker embedded in the stone fence at Isham Park, I found the three and five mile markers along Ocean Parkway, and even did a page on mile markers along the Long Island Rail Road. I was surprised to see the 5th mile marker of what is now Northern Boulevard beside the front driveway of Kingsland Homestead on 138th Street, the home of the Queens Historical Society. Northern Boulevard was built in 1859, and opened to traffic in 1860, between what is now Vernon Boulevard and the Flushing River by the Hunter’s Point, Newtown and Flushing Turnpike Company. It connected to roads further east past the Flushing River, but the newly built stretch was named Jackson Avenue for the turnpike company’s construction supervisor, John C. Jackson.… Read More

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Exploring Baisley Park, South Jamaica

November 4, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: A Walk in St. Albans

≪ Previous: A Queens Mile Marker

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Visitors unfamiliar with southeast Queens will find a sweeping, green oasis in Baisley Pond Park, which sits on an irregular plot between Foch, Sutphin, Rockaway and Baisley Boulevards. The park’s 110 acres offer baseball, softball and cricket fields in its southern extension between Rockaway Boulevard and the Belt Parkway, children’s playgrounds, catch and release fishing in its large peaceful pond, and plenty of benches to laze on. This time of year the fall colors are beginning to blaze and the new promenade at the pond rim, with a dozen carven frogs, looks out over the mirrory pond and its collection of shorebirds. On one of the playgrounds is what appears to be a sculpted elephant up to its shoulders in a tar pit. As you’ll see, this is actually a reference to a prehistoric-era find that civic engineers made here in the early 1850s, when they were damming three streams to… Read More

A Walk in St. Albans

November 7, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: The Lanes of Little Neck

≪ Previous: Exploring Baisley Park, South Jamaica

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The neighborhood in southern Queens named St. Albans was mostly farmland (note the name of one of its prominent streets, Farmers Boulevard) until the 1890s, when a small community began to take shape around Farmers and Linden Boulevards. The town was named by its first 100 residents for Britain’s first Christian martyr. The area was home to the St. Albans Golf Course from 1915 to the Depression; sports luminaries such as Babe Ruth honed their strokes there. The old golf course is now St. Albans Veterans Administration Extended Care Center and Roy Wilkins Park. Roy Wilkins Park sits on property that formerly was occupied by the St. Albans Naval Hospital. After the hospital closed in 1974 the U.S. Government allocated the 100-acre site to the Veterans Administration, which built a veterans’ extended care center on the east end of the property and ceded the western half to the city of New… Read More

The Lanes of Little Neck

November 11, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Honoring Past Residents: Northeast Queens’ Matinecock Indians

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There are a pair of very short, hidden lanes on the north side of Northern Boulevard between Marathon and Little Neck Parkways. Cornell Lane, which is marked by the Department of Transportation, is the longer of the two and is lined by a set of cozy one-family homes. The lane was formerly a part of the Cornell family’s Little Neck holdings. Possibly, the lane is named for Henry Benjamin Cornell, a member of Zion Church, who is buried in its churchyard. A lost lane called Wright’s Lane formerly intersected Cornell Lane, but no trace of it remains today. Five generations of the Cornell family made their homes in Little Neck. They were descended from Quaker Richard Cornell, who had come to Flushing from Rhode Island in 1643 and had received a land grant from the Dutch West India Company. A Cornell farmhouse still stands on Little Neck Parkway just north of the… Read More

Honoring Past Residents: Northeast Queens’ Matinecock Indians

November 14, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Worshiping Elmhurst

≪ Previous: The Lanes of Little Neck

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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… Read More

Worshiping Elmhurst

November 18, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Sprucing up the Ridgewood Plateau Arches

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Most of Whitney Avenue in Elmhurst runs from Broadway northeast to Roosevelt Avenue at 93rd Street, through a street grid that tilts northeast against the prevailing one. This was part of an early 20th century real estate development in which the streets were originally numbered and only later — by 1915 — were they given the names they still carry, Aske, Benham, Case, Denman, Elbertson, Forley, Gleane, Hampton, Ithaca, Judge, Ketcham, Layton, Macnish. By 1915, Roosevelt Avenue had been laid out and the el was under construction. One of the jewels of Elmhurst, a neighborhood blessed with its fair share of historic houses of worship, is the cobblestone-exterior Elmhurst Baptist Church at Whitney and Judge. The cornerstone was laid in 1902, with the church completed the following year. There are Myanmar (Burmese) Baptist and Indonesian Baptist services offered here. Bayside’s so-called Cobblestone House has sometimes been claimed to be the only such structure in… Read More

Sprucing up the Ridgewood Plateau Arches

November 21, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Studley Square, Northern Boulevard

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Photo by Christina Wilkinson In 1928, much of Queens was still largely unpopulated and unbuilt-upon. Ridgewood, however, was an exception to the rule, due to its proximity to Brooklyn, and real estate developers hoped to capitalize on the cachet of the neighborhood. By then, Ridgewood was dominated by attached brick and brownstone houses, as well as blocks of handsome, yellow-bricked apartments constructed by developer Gustave X. Mathews. He built from materials created in the Staten Island kilns of Balthazar Kreischer. In that year, the developers Realty Associates purchased 70 acres in a neighborhood then labeled as “North Ridgewood” but now a part of northern Maspeth roughly defined by Maurice Avenue, 64th Street, Grand Avenue and 74th Street. Builder John Aylmer set to work constructing two and six-family homes in the newly-named Ridgewood Plateau, so named for its location atop one of Queens’ higher hills. To identify the development, Realty Associates placed brick posts… Read More

Studley Square, Northern Boulevard

November 25, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Some Elmhurst History

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If you’ve never been to the Broadway-Flushing section of Queens, it’s worth a visit — it’s home to some of Queens’ finest architecture, having been part of the Rickert-Finley real estate development around the turn of the 20th century featuring large plots, wide lawns, and beautiful, eclectic buildings. I’ve been familiar with the neighborhood since 1993 when I moved to the area from Bay Ridge to be closer to a job. Broadway, which runs from Northern Boulevard/Crocheron Avenue north to 29th Avenue between 158th Street and Utopia Parkway, is named for a former name of Northern Boulevard (the local LIRR station never dropped the name). Though Broadway-Flushing was designated a Historic District by the United States Department of the Interior and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 12, 2006, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has decided against making the neighborhood a historic district. Because of that, developers eyeing the area’s large… Read More

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Some Elmhurst History

December 2, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Magnificent Middle Village Auto Repair Shop

≪ Previous: Studley Square, Northern Boulevard

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Newtown, founded in the mid-1600s after its colonists had fled from Native American attacks further west in Maspeth – and building literally a “new town,” mocks NYC’s preservationists, who seemingly prefer to recognize only buildings and artifacts in Manhattan and prefer to lavish designations and titles on buildings in that borough while ignoring the amazing treasures in what are considered the outer boroughs. In Queens, along with Jamaica and Flushing, Newtown (renamed ‘Elmhurst’ by developer Cord Meyer in the 1890s) retains several edifices and locales that existed in the first decades after its founding. The brownstone and granite Gothic First Presbyterian Church of Newtown at 54th Avenue and Queens Boulevard was constructed in 1895 by architect Frank Collins with $70,000 donated to the church in the will of one of its elders. When Queens Boulevard was constructed in 1910 and widened in the 1920s, the church had to be moved back several feet. The congregation… Read More

Magnificent Middle Village Auto Repair Shop

December 5, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Rosedale: Queens’ Beginning and End

≪ Previous: Some Elmhurst History

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There it sits at Metropolitan Avenue and 69th Street in Middle Village, across the street from All-Faiths Cemetery, a showcase of stone carving with the name Frank T. Lang positioned prominently on the chamfered corner, guarded by prehensile tailed creatures of no known genus or species. Its proximity to the cemetery is no accident, as Lang was a prominent stone carver as well as mausoleum architect in the early 20th century and his work can be found both in All-Faiths and in nearby St. John’s Cemetery. H.C. Bohack, the prominent mid-century food retailer, operated a gas station on the ground floor for several years. Bohack’s offices and restaurant were located further west at Metropolitan and Flushing Avenues. After the Lang offices moved out in 1946, a succession of knitting miles occupied the space, followed by a succession of auto repair shops. … Read More

Rosedale: Queens’ Beginning and End

December 9, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Another One Bites the Dust: West Chemical Building, Long Island City

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Quiet, suburban Rosedale is clustered along the Queens-Nassau County border, between Laurelton in the west and Valley Stream and Woodmere in the east. When visiting the area a couple of years ago, I was struck not by its architecture, which is mostly 50s and 60s suburban sprawl; I was more impressed with its resemblance to neighboring Nassau. It seems to be a part of Queens only by political considerations. Till 1898, when New York City expanded to five boroughs, Queens and Nassau were one (very) large county. As you move along the Queens-Nassau border, you can see places where they might as well have never separated. It’s also a place where some of Long Island’s longest roads begin and end…. A 1910 map by Hammond shows Rosedale as it was around 1910, when southern Queens was mostly farmland dotted with small towns. The Long Island Rail Road was already well-established by then; the Springfield station was… Read More

Another One Bites the Dust: West Chemical Building, Long Island City

December 12, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Grand, Baby! My Favorite Newtown Creek Bridge

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Photo by Nathan Kensinger Yet one more remnant of Queens’ manufacturing past, the West Chemical Building, a.k.a. the CN Building, has been claimed by the gods of redevelopment this week. It’s just one of many manufacturing, storage and warehouse buildings along the array of cul-de-sacs off Jackson Avenue between Queens Boulevard and 21st Street to be repurposed or razed in favor of high-rise luxury housing in recent years. A five-story poured concrete structure, marked by a siding entering the building, housed the manufacturing plant known variously as “CN Building”, “West Chemical Products”, or “West Disinfectants, ”an arched roof parapet on its east side with a truncated corner. An angled structure, likely containing a conveyor belt connected the building from its left side to a brick/poured concrete three-story building sporting a CN logo in relief. The former CN plant at one time hosted the Department of Elections Queens Bureau and this was where all… Read More

Grand, Baby! My Favorite Newtown Creek Bridge

December 16, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: East Elmhurst and the Lent-Riker-Smith House

≪ Previous: Another One Bites the Dust: West Chemical Building, Long Island City

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Of the many bridges that cross the noxious and noisome Newtown Creek, which includes the Pulaski (McGuiness Boulevard), J.J. Byrne (Greenpoint Avenue) Kosciuszko (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge, and the late lamented Penny Bridge, my favorite is the rattling Grand Street Bridge, which connects outlandishly remote sections of Brooklyn and Queens, two neighborhoods in East Williamsburg and western Maspeth you wouldn’t visit unless you worked there. Or unless you are me. The reason for my preference is simple. While the other Newtown Creek bridges are relatively bland products of the mid-to-late 20th century and are quite boring in aspect the Grand Street Bridge is a 1900 swing bridge that looks like something you would put together with an erector set when you were a kid. It is hard to choose what the best approach to the bridge is, esthetically speaking. You can approach by boat, as here. The twin spires of… Read More