The Rubber Men of College Point

March 6, 2015, 8:00 am

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College Point has always been a rubber town. The village in northwest Queens, still very much isolated by the Whitestone Expressway and the old Flushing Airport grounds, was founded by German immigrant Conrad Poppenhusen, who received a patent from Charles Goodyear to produce rubber products and settled into the area in the Civil War era to build a factory, very much like his contemporary, piano manufacturer Henry Steinway. Like Steinway, Poppenhusen formed a company town surrounding his works, combining two forgotten smaller villages, Flammersburg and Strattonport. He founded a railroad to bering workers from the East River ferries to College Point (parts of it are now included in the Long Island Rail Road) as well as the town’s cultural center, the Poppenhusen Institute, which continues its work today. Poppenhusen’s success attracted other similar manufacturers to the area. The town also contained may ornamental metal works and ribbon factories employing hundreds from the area. The… Read More

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United Sherpa Association of Elmhurst

March 10, 2015, 8:00 am

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Turn a corner in Queens, and you never know what ethic group you’ll run into, especially in the Elmhurst-Jackson Heights-Flushing axis, home to dozens of nationalities, especially from South America and Asia. I had never known that Elmhurst was a gathering place for expatriate Sherpa, whose homeland is in the shadow of the Himalaya Mountains in eastern Nepal. The Sherpa are best known for their services as mountain guides and the provision of assistance to adventurers climbing Himalayan peaks. Tenzing Norgay, likely the most widely-known Sherpa in history, aided Sir Edmund Hillary, the first European to attain the peak of Everest, the tallest mountain on the globe. The Sherpa language is unique to the region they inhabit, but can be written using the Tibetan language or Dravidian script used widely in the Indian subcontinent. Prior to the mid-1990s, there had not been much Sherpa immigration to the New York City area,… Read More

The Mile Markers of the Long Island Railroad

March 13, 2015, 11:00 am

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In the colonial era, mile markers were often placed along the main road to inform the traveler of how many miles there were to go to the nearest big town, or how far away you were from it. In NYC, the now-defunct Post Road in Manhattan, Kingsbridge Road in upper Manhattan (now a part of Broadway), Kings Highway in the town of New Utrecht (now Bensonhurst, Brooklyn), Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights, and Ocean Parkway, built in the 1850s, all had such mile markers. Ocean Parkway, in fact, had half-mile markers, only one of which, the 3rd mile marker, is still in place. Railroads, too, have mile markers. I have been riding the Port Washington Branch of the Long Island Rail Road regularly since 1992 and have noticed the occasional mile marker along the route. Recently, though, I nailed down where most of them were, though most are in spots to inaccessible… Read More

Sunnyside of the World

March 17, 2015, 8:00 am

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I had made my way from Hunters Point east, hugging the Queens Midtown Expressway since I hadn’t used that route before (I won’t again; it’s boring) and drifting northeast, was edging through Sunnyside en route to the #7 train home. Once I got to 48th Avenue, I was met with a great deal of signage between 43rd and 45th Streets that wasn’t in English or even used Roman characters, and so the germ of a post slowly evolved in my brain. I wish I could travel more, but when working, never have the time (I have had to settle for two weeks vacation per year throughout my working life) and when not working, don’t want to spend money traveling. Besides, I don’t want to do what the rest of the civilized world does on vacation. On these couple of blocks on 48th Avenue, though, I can travel the world without bothering with… Read More

Downtown Jam. Session

March 20, 2015, 8:00 am

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Jamaica’s name has nothing to do with the Caribbean island country. The avenue, the neighborhood and the bay are instead named for the Jameco Indians, an Algonquian tribe that occupied the center and southern sections of what is today’s Queens County, for hundreds of years before the colonial era. The Jameco name was Algonquian for beaver, which had been plentiful in the region; a remnant of this is Beaver Road, which ran beside the now-filled Beaver Pond south of the Long Island Rail Road. Native Americans used the trail, which connects to original trails that run from the East River to eastern Long Island, for trade with tribes spanning from the east coast to the midwest. After the Dutch settled the present day downtown area, known before 1664 as Rustdorp (“rest town”), Jamaica Avenue (as the Jamaica Plank Road) became a tolled highway for much of its length. The tolls were… Read More

The Haight: Flushing vs. San Francisco

March 24, 2015, 8:00 am

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You might think San Francisco and Flushing have absolutely nothing in common, but they do share something. Way over in the extreme western end of Flushing, between College Point Boulevard, the Van Wyck Expressway, the Long Island Railroad and the Kissena Park Corridor, there’s a cluster of small streets unnoticed except by their residents and the people who work there. One of the north-south streets is called Haight Street, the same name as the anchor street of San Francisco’s counterculture mecca, the Haight-Ashbury District — more colloquially, just The Haight. The Forgotten NY camera recently investigated both districts, and the contrasts are as different as the West and East Coasts. Come and see where the smell of incense fills the air and where the smell of the Flushing River suffuses the nostrils … The Haight of Flushing This extraordinarily detailed Belcher Hyde property map from 1928 shows The Haight’s street layout pretty much as it appears today, and… Read More

Bell’s on My Fingers

March 27, 2015, 8:00 am

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Named for an 18th century family who owned property in eastern Queens and not the credited inventor of the telephone, Bell Boulevard has developed over 150 years from a dirt trace to harboring some of eastern Queens’ more entertaining samples of eclectic architecture. From the NYC Landmarks Designation Report: “Until the last decades of the nineteenth century, Bayside was primarily farmland. The property on which the house stands was acquired by Abraham Bell in 1824. A shipping and commission merchant operating in lower Manhattan, his firm, Abraham Bell and Company was involved in the cotton trade and in transporting immigrants from Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s. “His son, Abraham Bell 2nd, became head of the firm around 1835 and the company changed its name to Abraham Bell and Son in 1844. The Bells had homes in several locations: Bayside, Yonkers (where Bell Brothers operated a money-lending business) and in Narragansett… Read More

Queens’ Murray Hill

March 31, 2015, 8:00 am

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When most New Yorkers think of Murray Hill, they likely think of the area on the east side of Manhattan, just south of the United Nations between 34th and 42nd Street and east of Madison Avenue…and they well might, since its tree-lined streets harbor beautiful brownstones, high rise buildings and townhouses. It is home to prominent professional, political and social clubs, as well as the recently renovated Morgan Library – a must visit for both NYers and visitors alike. But this week, we’ll talk about the “other” Murray Hill, a neighborhood in Queens so secret that it toils in the shadow of its bustling, ambitious older brother Flushing. Like its namesake in Manhattan, it too is home to aged, eclectic and unusual architecture…but sadly, unlike Manhattan’s Murray Hill, its uniqueness is vanishing as we watch. It’s in Queens, after all. The brick-faced neo-Gothic St. John’s Episcopal Church is one of southern Murray… Read More

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A Bridge Between Neighborhoods, Part 1

April 2, 2015, 6:30 am

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Little Neck and Douglaston are sister neighborhoods in the far northeast of Queens. The border between what were two tiny towns on the north shore of Long Island in the colonial and postcolonial eras, before they were absorbed into Greater New York along with the rest of Queens in 1898, has long been a puzzlement. Some chroniclers say it’s Marathon Parkway, which stands in for 250th Street. I think that allows way to little territory to Little Neck, however, and you’ll forgive me for being partial: I have been a resident of Little Neck since 2007, and reside an Eli Manning touchdown pass, or Geno Smith interception return, from Nassau County. Despite the fact that the neighborhoods are adjacent, easy entrance and egress between them has long been difficult. There are only two roads between the two neighborhoods near the shoreline: Northern Boulevard, the mother road of Long Island, and a… Read More

A Bridge Between Neighborhoods, Part 2

April 7, 2015, 6:45 am

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Today we continue our exploration of the border between Little Neck and Douglaston. When I left off last week, I had just traversed the new shortcut between Little Neck and Douglaston Hills. It’s a short wooden footbridge over a creek running through Udalls Cove Park, a 30-acre salt marsh that effectively delineates the border between the two neighborhoods north of Northern Boulevard. I had chanced upon the former St. Peter’s African Methodist Episcopal Church on Orient Avenue, formerly known as 243rd Street. At Church Street, formerly known as 44th Avenue, we encounter one of Queens’ most historic churches: Zion Church, which has been here since 1830. Major Thomas Wickes, a patriot originally from Huntington, owned the entire Douglaston peninsula jutting into Little Neck Bay after the Revolutionary War, and subsequently sold it to Wynant Van Zandt in the 1810s. Scotsman George Douglas purchased the peninsula from Van Zandt in 1835. The region was… Read More

A Vanished Reminder of Queens Nomenclature

April 10, 2015, 6:45 am

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Until a few years ago, an unassuming two-story brick building with a porch painted red in West Maspeth held a key to Queens’ past, before the cartographers decided to number all the streets in the 1920s to make things less (?) confusing. Until the 1920s, Queens street names trended toward the tried and true, with plenty of presidents, governors, spruces and elms, but further east, in what would be the Juniper Park area, 78th Street was Grieffenberg Street, 81st was Thew Street, and 84th was Gwydir Street. Even further east, proposed streets east of Queens Boulevard in the Forest Hills area that now are a thicket of 60th drives and 62nd roads were mapped in alphabetical order, carrying odd, otherworldly names like Meteor, Nome, Occident, Thupman, Uriu, Yalu and Zuni. The only remnant of this scheme is Jewel Avenue, the “J” street in the sequence. Many of Queens’ subway and el lines have… Read More

A Relic at the General George E. Lawrence Square in Flushing

April 14, 2015, 6:45 am

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General George E. Lawrence Square (actually a triangle), defined by Parsons Boulevard, Elm Avenue and 147th Street along 45th Avenue, can be found across the street from Flushing Hospital. It honors a St. Francis College graduate (my alma mater) who was a star quarterback at Penn, graduated with a medical degree and began his practice at Flushing Hospital, heading obstetrics and gynecology for many years. Lawrence served with the “Fighting 69th” Regiment during WWI, receiving two Silver Stars for valor. He rose to Lieutenant Colonel at the end of the war and had risen to Brigadier General by World War II. The square named in 1951 for Gen. Lawrence (1881-1949) was originally owned by the Flushing Garden Club, which allowed patients from Flushing Hospital to maintain the grounds. You may guess, though, the reason for my post today is the identifying sign, which probably goes back to the 1951 renaming. Street signs in Queens… Read More

A Visit to a 19th Century Jewish Cemetery and Its Triangle Shirtwaist Monument

April 17, 2015, 6:45 am

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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 of burial practices long forgotten… the faces of the dead are preserved on some of the tombstones. In a process known as “enameling,” photographs of the deceased are burned into porcelain (in a process described in detail in John Yang’s book, “Mount Zion: Sepulchral Photographs.”) This was a custom brought to the U.S. by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. A look at newer gravesites in New York City will reveal that placing photos of the deceased on gravestones is returning. In the Mt. Zion stones, the tablets are mostly oval and some are gilt-edged. Some are… Read More

How the Jackie Robinson Parkway Got Its Name

April 21, 2015, 6:45 am

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In Major League Baseball, April 15th is Jackie Robinson Day, honoring the player who broke the barrier against African-American players participating in MLB. His first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers was on April 15, 1947. In many ways Jackie Robinson was the most compelling player in major league baseball history. He was selected by Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey to break the MLB color barrier in 1947 (no African-American had been employed by a major league team since at least 1901, the beginning of the “modern era” of major league ball) after a sterling athletic record at UCLA, where he had lettered in track, football, baseball and basketball. Rickey needed a can’t-miss prospect, as well as a person who would be able to endure the inevitable racial nonsense that would arise in a sport where many players were from the deep South. Robinson was a five-tool player who hit for average, and power (averaging 16… Read More

The Orange Hut in Woodside Used to Be a White Tower Restaurant

April 24, 2015, 6:45 am

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The Orange Hut at Broadway and 54th Street still carries the outlines and contours of its former life as a White Tower hamburger chain restaurant. The last White Tower closed in Toledo, Ohio, in June 2008; the chain originated in 1926. There were about 230 White Towers at the chain’s height in the 1950s. The restaurants have operated in at least 14 states, including New York, Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. The interior of the Orange Hut still contains some hints of its origins, such as swivel stools adjoining a counter. Here it is in its original incarnation, below. Pretty spiffy looking. Photo by DVRBS In the early 1920s a series of “White” themed fast food restaurants began to pop up all over the country. In addition to White Tower, there was White Castle — still going strong and, in fact, the one at Northern and Bell Boulevards a few miles to… Read More

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Beech Court, a Surprising Enclave in College Point

April 28, 2015, 6:45 am

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One of College Point’s many features that really should be considered by the Landmarks Preservation Commission is Beech Court or Beech Court Circle, located on a cul-de-sac at 121st Street just off 14th Avenue. While such an arrangement — a group of private homes surrounding a central green — is quite popular in the suburbs, this may be the only such occurrence in New York City as a whole. First a little background on the area: College Point was originally settled by the Native American Matinecocks. The Indians sold much of it to New Netherland Governor William Kieft in 1645. William Lawrence was the first British settler. (College Point Boulevard’s name until 1969, Lawrence Street, honored the Lawrence family.) Communities known as Strattonport and Flammersberg united to form College Point in 1867. College Point gets its name from St. Paul’s College, founded by 1838 as a seminary by the Rev. Augustus Muhlenberg,… Read More

On the Trail of History: Queens’ Remaining New York State Historical Markers

May 1, 2015, 6:45 am

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In 1928 the New York State Education Department devised an initiative to mark places of historical significance, and over the next four decades, almost 2800 such markers were placed all over the state. The signs themselves are marvels of design, in my opinion. Most of them feature dark blue backgrounds with gold raised block lettering and trim, though there are variations in color, lettering, and very occasionally shape, just to change it up, I imagine. The state discontinued the series in 1966 after high-speed travel on expressways became the norm. This flickr page that assembles photos of the markers taken by various photographers illustrates the basic, simple and readable design of these signs.  Of the 92 historical signs placed around the city beginning in 1928, only a handful are still there. Over the decades, some have been removed or vandalized by local youths, some have been claimed by new construction or car crashes. Some of… Read More

Tracking the Evolution of Flushing’s Broadway LIRR Station

May 5, 2015, 6:45 am

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When I moved to Flushing in 1993, my building was a few blocks away from the Long Island Rail Road station we are taking a look at today — the (to some) inexplicably named Broadway station. Broadway in Queens runs from the East River at the Socrates Sculpture Park on Vernon Boulevard to the heart of Elmhurst at Queens Boulevard — miles to the west of fabulous Flushing. Yet here the Broadway LIRR station sits. How can this be? Until about 1920, all of Northern Boulevard from the Flushing River to the city line in Little Neck was named Broadway. West of the Flushing River, Northern Boulevard was known as Jackson Avenue, because it was built as a toll road by John Jackson in the 1850s from the waterfront through Astoria, Woodside and the Trains Meadow area now called Jackson Heights. East of the Flushing River there was an existing trail that had likely… Read More

Exploring the Names of the Neighborhoods of Western Queens

May 8, 2015, 6:45 am

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12th Street near 27th Avenue, Astoria Village Queens has been a county since 1683. Just as the USA originally had 13 states, the state of New York has 12 original counties: Albany, Cornwall, Dukes, Dutchess, Kings, New York (Manhattan), Orange, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk, Ulster and Westchester. Nassau County, you say? It’s a Johnny come lately. In 1898, when four counties voted to become part of New York City, becoming Greater New York, half the county of Queens — the eastern towns of North Hempstead, Hempstead and Oyster Bay — chose to become independent, and in 1899 they created a county of their own, Nassau. Had these towns not separated from Queens, our present task — examining the origins of the names of the borough’s neighborhoods — would call for entries on Lynbrook, Long Beach, Port Washington, Oyster Bay, Massapequa… and I’d be writing till Christmas. As is, Queens is large enough. Before 1870 Western Queens consisted… Read More

A Stroll Through Queens Plaza

May 12, 2015, 6:45 am

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Dutch Kills Green Williamsburgers and Greenpointers curious about the vast territory above Newtown Creek need do no more than take the B62 bus to the end of the line — or walk or bike across the Pulaski Bridge and take Jackson Avenue to Queens Plaza — to take a look at one of Queens’ most interesting revivals in recent times. Until a couple of years ago the east end of Queens Plaza, where Northern Boulevard begins a nearly 90-mile run (as Route 25A) to the end of Long Island, was home to a run of the mill parking lot called the John F. Kennedy Commuter Plaza. Its southern end, running along the elevated Queensboro Plaza station, was home to fast food restaurants and strip joints. But a recent multimillion dollar, five-year restoration has  converted the once moribund spot into a green oasis replete with separated bike and pedestrian paths. The new Dutch Kills Green… Read More