On the cover: Dancing and more at the corner of Cypress Avenue, with trolley tracks, and Myrtle Avenue, near Cornelia Street, in Ridgewood / Photo via seeoldnyc.com; U.S. National Tennis Championships in women’s singles, 1924, Forest Hills Stadium / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, George Grantham Bain Collection, via Wikipedia; and Shellball Apartments lobby, Kew Gardens, 1929 / Photo by Drix Duryea / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Winold Reiss Collection.
Queens as a ‘valley of ashes’
A true tale of Flushing Meadows in ‘ The Great Gatsby ’
by Stephanie G. Meditz Editor
“Terrible place, isn’t it?” Tom Buchanan says in the second chapter of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” before whisking his mistress away from her home in a bleak, ashen wasteland for the day.
But a lot can happen in a century. Much of that “desolate” swath between West Egg and glitzy New York City in Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel is now a beloved 897-acre park, the largest in the borough. It also is home to numerous cultural institutions, and people visit in droves when the Mets are in town or the US Open is underway.
Yes, Fitzgerald was describing part of what is now Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
covered in “spasms of bleak dust,” he writes, and the blue eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg “brood on” overhead on a billboard.
Although that description hardly applies to the crown jewel that folks across the city know and love today, Fitzgerald called it like he saw it. Jason Antos, Queens’ borough historian, said he did so “beautifully.”
“A lot of what is described in the book is very accurate and very detailed, and I’m convinced that F. Scott Fitzgerald definitely walked through the area,” Antos said. Small details that Fitzgerald includes in the novel can be seen in photographs from that era, he explained, and some of it could not be seen from the train window.
Readers are first introduced to Queens, some of which Fitzgerald termed a “valley of ashes,” as early as the novel’s second chapter, from the perspective of Nick Carraway as he looks out the window of the Long Island Rail Road. The vast stretch is
The iconic billboard also was in the area, Antos said, but it was closer to downtown Flushing than Flushing Meadows. He believes the author must have canvassed the area, taking notes as he walked down Northern Boulevard, Roosevelt Avenue and thereabouts.
The wetlands surrounding Flushing Bay were used as dumping grounds at the turn of
the century, both for garbage and the heaps of ash that came from burning coal. They became known as the Corona Ash Dump.
The Brooklyn Ash Removal Co., one of just two entities of its kind in the city, at the time was owned by John “Fishhooks” McCarthy, a Tammany Hall politician whom Antos described as one of the “very shady figures” running the ash operation.
His company was contracted to remove tons of ash each day from chimneys and fireplaces in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, and haul them to Queens.
“It was a really terrible sight, because you had the garbage dump north of Roosevelt Avenue, which is where Citi Field is today,” he said.
“Then south of the railroad, south of Roosevelt, south of Northern, you have the ash dumps. And then slightly to the east of that, you had the Iron Triangle with all the automotive shops.”
With all that happening in the Flushing Meadows corridor, he said, there also were barges transporting sand, concrete and cement on the Flushing River.
continued on page 17
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City built rails and they did come
Population doubled even when subway growth ebbed
by Michael Gannon Senior News Editor
After the Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909, connecting the borough to Manhattan, there was a corresponding shakeup among the borough’s population.
U.S. Census records show that the 284,041 residents in 1910 rose to 469,031 by the 1920 federal count, an increase of 135,001. By comparison, what happened in connection with the expanded subway system in the 1920s could be called an earthquake.
The population would more than double by 1930 to 1,079,129, even with the subway’s growth less than it could have been.
In the 10 years in between, Mayor John Hylan in late 1922 began to lay the groundwork for what eventually would become the city-operated Independent Subway System beginning in 1932.
But Hylan also would be officially blamed for the lack of more progress in the 1920s.
The Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corp, known in city vernacular as the BMT, was still going with train service to and from Jamaica along what is now the J-Z line; and the Queens-Brooklyn line with a Rdigewood-Glendale terminus at Myrtle Avenue; and it shared some lines with the Interborough Rapid Transit Co., whose major footprint in Queens was the expanding Flushing Line.
It could have been more.
The only station openings in Queens in the 1920s took place along the Flushing line, with 111th Street in October 1925; Mets-Willets Point in May 1927; and Flushing-Main Street in January 1928. Plans that had their genesis in the 1920s did lead to nine stations in Queens opening in 1933. The borough already had benefited from 23 stations openings from 1916 to 1919, including 19 in 1917 alone.
Jason Antos of the Queens Historical Society, who also serves as the official borough historian, said it was not a coincidence that subway service and population grew simultaneously.
“People go where transportation is,” Antos told the Chronicle.
He added that savvy Queens business owners — and not just those in the train and trolley industries — have known about the connection going back to the days of stagecoaches.
“When Steinway comes to Astoria from Manhattan [in 1873] and establishes its piano factory, it establishes Steinway Village for its workers,” Antos said. “And it brings the Steinway Trolley into the neighborhood. It was a private line.”
He said Conrad Poppenhusen had done the same thing when he set up his rubber works in College Point in the 1860s, including a private line. The Van Wycks, Antos said, paid for an extension of Northern Boulevard into Little Neck. Others invested in similar projects.
“These guys all came to Queens within the same 10- to 15-year period,” he said. “One of the things industrialists used to do was put a lot of money into transportation. It was always a major attraction.”
Antos said Flushing owes a lot of its early expansion to hotel owners and saloon keepers who invested in stagecoach routes.
The owners would build routes by signing up other bars, hotels and hospitality businesses to serve as stops.
Queens was a long time in coming. He reportedly envisioned a subway line running from 53rd Street in Manhattan under the East River to Queens Plaza and continuing along Queens Boulevard to 179th Street in Jamaica, the present-day F train.
But the 179th Street station would not open until 1950.
And much like a modern real estate broker will make a point of including “located near the subway” when applicable in an apartment listing, the proprietor of a Flushing saloon or hotel, in all ads, would not miss an opportunity to mention that it was a stop along the coach lines.
“Exactly,” Antos said. “Nothing is new. It just evolves.”
And it is just possible the impact could have been far greater but for political mismanagement.
Published sources, including Wikipedia, state that Hylan sought a massive expansion of the subway system throughout Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.
One of his few successes in
Among Hylan’s failed ideas in the borough were a line between Hunters Point and Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, though the G line, opened in 1933, comes relatively close, connecting Court Square and Brooklyn’s Church Street.
He also reportedly envisioned extending the Flushing line to Bell Boulevard in Bayside along Main Street, Kissena and Northern boulevards; building a line from Roosevelt Avenue to Jamaica; and connecting Astoria with 125th Street in Manhattan.
But according to the website nycsubway.org, Hylan himself was found largely to blame for the failure to expand the system more quickly and efficiently.
The website has republished an article from the Feb. 14, 1925 edition of the Electric Railway Journal, which reported that a special
commission empaneled by thenGov. Al Smith found the mayor was responsible for “the failure to build the much needed new subway lines or extend the existing subway lines.”
According to the article, Hylan and members of the Board of Estimate leveled charges against members of the New York Transit Commission over the delays and sought members’ removal.
The report of Justice John McAvoy found insufficient evidence to back Hylan’s allegations.
“The repeated and persistent refusals of the Mayor and other members of the Board of Estimate of New York City to adopt proposals for the validation of new routes and to approve contracts for construction of routes already validated ... completely frustrated provision for increased transit facilities,” the article states.
The one point over which McAvoy reportedly took the Transit Commission to task was recommending a state law preventing it from modifying contracts with transit companies without the city’s permission.
McAvoy also recommended that Gov. Smith and the state Legislature at least remain open to the possibility of increasing the subway fare from 5 cents to 7 on rapid transit lines. Q
Looking east along the former IRT Flushing line in 1928, one can see the original Willets Point station in the distance. Shea Stadium would open on the field on the left in another 36 years. The house on the right would give way to the MTA’s Casey Stengel Bus Depot and a pedestrian bridge into Flushing Meadows Corona Park. PHOTO COURTESY NYC TRANSIT MUSEUM / LUNDIN COLLECTION
Workers in 1927 change the course of a trolly line beneath the elevated subway tracks at Queensborough Plaza. The trollies still had a few decades left. PHOTO VIA SEEOLDNYC.COM
When Astoria was Hollywood
Valentino, Fields, director Griffith all filmed here
by Andrew Karpan Chronicle Contributor
Before Paramount became one of Hollywood’s few remaining independent movie studios, it was part of the Famous Players Lasky Corp., and its star producer, Jesse Lasky, was determined, after the end of the First World War, to build a new enormous studio in New York. He decided to build it in Queens.
For the rest of the world, Astoria had only just become accessible by way of the Queensboro Bridge, built a decade earlier in 1909.
“They built the Queensboro Bridge, and the Queensboro Bridge was built before you had the Triborough Bridge, so that was the only way to get to Queens,” Bob Singleton of the Greater Astoria Historical Society told the Chronicle.
The accessibility lured studios in.
“[By bridge] the studio can be reached by automobile in 15 minutes,” Lasky’s producing partner at Paramount, Adolph Zukor, told the Queens Chamber of Commerce in 1919, as plans to build an enormous 140,000-square-foot movie studio began to form.
in Queens by then too, if quietly and expensively. Lionel Barrymore, most known these days for playing Mr. Potter in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” had shot his 1920 silent Civil War melodrama, “The Copperhead,” in an enormous staged village built in Elmhurst, an endeavor that cost what one early movie periodical estimated was $1,000 a day.
It was that same year that the Paramount studio opened in Astoria, occupying what The New York Times called “a large plot of ground in Long Island City” that had been converted into “a studio and laboratory of the most modern type, containing every facility known for the making of ... high-class motion picture productions.”
The landmark structure was built on 35th Avenue between 35th and 36th streets.
Griffth’s version of the musical, which would co-star Carol Dempster and become the 1925 movie “Sally of the Sawdust.” It was among the three movies Griffith would shoot in the studio in Astoria, and a personal work for both him and Fields, a comic meditation on their lives as bicoastal traveling entertainers at the turn of a new age of entertainment.
The nascent movie industry itself had only just begun in the Edison laboratory in New Jersey, and a handful of studios had blossomed throughout Manhattan during the cinema’s first wave of mass popularity.
“For the benefit of those living west of Jersey City,” wrote Lawrence Langdon in a 1921 issue of the early movie magazine Photoplay Journal, “Astoria was the garbage spot supreme of New York until Jesse Lasky or Adolph Zukor or somebody in the F.P.L. organization decided to build a studio there.”
Movies were already being filmed
It was the invention of then-cutting edge sound stages that convinced producers such as Lasky and Zukor to invest heavily in real estate on the East Coast. “With the perfection of artificial lighting equipment, Los Angeles’ sunshine is no longer a necessity” Lasky told Photoplay, in a story the magazine ran in 1922 on the rivalry between the coasts titled the “Battle of Two Cities.”
“The idea behind Paramount opening that studio in 1920 was them to carve out a niche in the emerging film ecosystem where they would take advantage of the proximity of Broadway and stage productions,”
Barbara Miller, a curator with the Museum of the Moving Image, told the Chronicle.
MoMI is next door to the studio, now Kaufman Astoria.
After coming to prominence through his popular Broadway show “Poppy,” W.C. Fields went across the East River to Queens to shoot D.W.
While it largely was made inside the new Paramount studios, Griffith also ambitiously turned to the surrounding neighborhoods to give the musical added verisimilitude, shooting a bakery scene on Bell Avenue in Bayside, which “doubles for the fictional town of Green Meadow for most of the picture,” according to the film historian Richard Koszarski in his book “Hollywood on Hudson.”
Fields himself would move to Bayside, to a bungalow on a large 106-by145-foot property overlooking Little Neck Bay.
The proximity to the stars did not go unnoticed in Astoria.
“We kids used to go up there and look through the holes other kids had gouged in the fence’s wooden palings, and watch them make movies,” recalled Ethel Merman in her 1955 memoirs. Before becoming a legendary star of the stage herself, she spent the decade growing up in a still-preserved apartment building at 29-08 31 Ave.
“I never saw Valentino. I would have remembered him if I had. But I did see Greta Nissen, Adolphe Menjou, Gilda Gray, and, to me, the most beautiful of all, Alice Brady,” Mer-
man would remember.
Rudolph Valentino, who himself would move to Bayside before his untimely death in 1926, was among the first stars to take advantage of the technical possibilities of the Paramount studio in Astoria, a different world entirely from the open valleys of backlots available in spacious California.
The first movie Valentino made in Astoria, the 1924 Booth Tarkington adaptation “Monsieur Beaucaire,” was a masterpiece of light and ornate costume, covered by The Times for its use of “a new system of lighting,” under which every character was “given just the necessary amount of light to be effective.”
“You’d get the top entertainers that would move here,” said Singleton, from the Historical Society, “and then you’d get the extras, the mob. These are people that would lounge around the studio, or the studio would have their names ... they would be doing [historical] scenes, and they would hire the first 90 people who showed up.”
All told, the Astoria studio would employ some 1,500 people, producing over 110 silent movies from its opening in 1921 to 1927. The studio would survive the transition to sound — making some 35 sound pictures, starting with the 1929 Jeanne Eagels movie “The Letter,” adapted from a Broadway production of a W. Somerset Maugham play.
The most celebrated of these was
“The Cocoanuts,” which came out the same year, and is remembered as the first feature film the Marx Brothers ever made.
They were busy on Broadway too, performing evening and matinee performances of their play “Animal Crackers” while commuting afterward to Astoria to shoot some of the group’s most remembered early comic riffs. (The Marx Brothers would shoot the movie version of “Animal Crackers” in the Astoria studio a year after that.)
Other major sound movies from that era included “The Battle of Paris,” a Cole Porter musical that would be director Robert Florey’s last movie in Astoria. But by the end of the 1920s, Paramount had already shifted toward using the Astoria studio as a generator primarily of short films, part of a project that Paramount’s Lasky promised, per a 1929 report in the trade magazine Exhibitors Herald-World, would create a “miniature Hollywood in Astoria.” And for a time, it was.
But Paramount would wind down its feature movie-making operations in Astoria by 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression. The studio would handle a variety of independent productions before being taken over by the U.S. military to shoot instructional videos used in the Second World War. Today, revived with many more recent hit films and TV shows under its belt, it is the heart of the Kaufman Arts District. Q
W.C. Fields and Carol Dempster star in 1925’s “Sally of the Sawdust,” filmed at Paramount Studios, left, which today is Kaufman Astoria Studios. PHOTOS COURTESY KAUFMAN ASTORIA STUDIOS, ABOVE, AND MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE, LEFT
“The Battle of Paris,” left, being filmed on the backlot of Paramount Studios in Astoria in 1929; shoes and outfits galore in the studio’s wardrobe department in 1925; and D.W. Griffith, in the director’s chair, at the filming of “That Royle Girl” in 1925. PHOTOS COURTESY MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE
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Folks from far and wide know all about Queens’ two state-of-the-art airports, LaGuardia and JFK.
Not nearly as many people know that Jackson Heights had one nearly a century ago, before today’s facilities were even ideas. The short life of Holmes Airport lasted from 1929 to 1940.
The New York Times in 1937 reported that the airport’s owners sought an injunction to stop the city from developing the nearby North Beach Airport, which the court rejected. That development would become LaGuardia Airport by 1939. Rendered obsolete, Holmes shuttered a year later.
Nonetheless, Jackson Heights has retained much of its rich historical character over the last century, as have other planned communities built around the same time.
The neighborhood now touted as the city’s first cooperative and “garden apartment” community was a vast stretch of farmland when the Queensboro Corp., led by Edward Archibald MacDougall, bought it in the early 20th century.
Initial developments there in the 1910s consisted of conventional five-story walkups, Jackson Heights Beautification Group board member Daniel Karatzas explained. But, he said, the design changed in 1917, when the Queensboro Corp. built what are now known as the Greystone Apartments.
“They built apartment buildings that were between four and six stories, that were one apartment deep, with two to four exposures. Some of the buildings were then separated,” he said. “So instead of building one mega building along the side street, they built six, seven buildings with separate entrances that were identical or near identical.”
of Manhattan,” Karatzas said.
He said there is still a “general pleasantness” to walking the residential avenues, which are architecturally coherent. Dozens of blocks in Jackson Heights were designated as a historic district in 1993, an effort pioneered by the JHBG, which formed years prior.
The gardens lived on well past the ’20s, Karatzas said — they still absorb rainwater and provide oxygen to this day, and there are residents who tend to street trees.
“If you had an apartment in Jackson Heights, you were guaranteed a beautiful view,” Queens Borough Historian Jason Antos told the Chronicle, whether residents could see Manhattan, other parts of Queens or open areas.
monthly rents as the ’20s started to boom.
“By selling the apartments, they could hopefully make a profit and take all of that capital and then build the next complex,” Karatzas said. Virtually all the larger complexes were sold as co-ops, and the buildings got bigger as the enterprise proved successful.
They also had more amenities, including the automatic push-button elevator, which was legalized in the early ’20s.
But by around 1924, Karatzas said, the Queensboro Corp. realized they had “overreached.” Apartments were selling at a fraction of the cost of construction. In the Towers complex, which cost more than $2.5 million to build, an 1,800 square-foot unit went for about $25,000.
home to “fairly modest” sized houses and some apartments.
That is not so much the case anymore. Like Jackson Heights, Sunnyside Gardens is on the National Register of Historic Places, and that designation spiked costs further.
Sunnyside Gardens, too, was one of the city’s first garden apartment complexes. Antos said the neighborhood was built up in sectors, in which apartment buildings sit in a semicircle around an interior courtyard.
The Department of City Planning in 1974 named the area a special planned community preservation district to prevent changes to the historic courts and landscaping, after the original easements that did so expired. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission named it a historic district in 2007.
Antos said also that the original Sunnyside from the colonial era was in what is now known as Sunnyside Yard, located opposite from Sunnyside Gardens. The Bragaw family built a homestead there and called it Sunnyside Hill.
Forest Hills Gardens
Also part of the garden apartment movement was Forest Hills Gardens, built by the Russell Sage Foundation in the early 20th century. With Sunnyside Gardens and Jackson Heights as respective blue-collar and upper-middle class enclaves, Forest Hills Gardens became one for the affluent, Antos said. Connection to transit was, as ever, a major draw.
In developing Jackson Heights, Queensboro Corp. leaders were inspired by the “garden cities” they had seen in Europe during the World War I era, Karatzas said. That concept was to maintain an enclosed green space in the middle of the block.
Queensboro’s innovation, also influenced by the tenement reform movement, was to build garden apartments from about 1917 to 1925, placing apartment buildings around the perimeter of a block with private green space in the center. Karatzas said the idea had been “alien” to most builders, as it left developable land aside for residents’ shared use.
Private homes, mostly semiattached, also were built around that time. It was typical for them to have yards in the front, side and rear.
“The idea was that if you’re going to aim to the middle- or upper-middle class, you’re going to have to give them things, like some open space — their own private open space — that they weren’t going to get on the island
Tennis courts and golf courses between buildings were further draws for residents, Antos said, as was the proximity to new transit.
Developers knew the 7 train was coming long before it arrived in 1917, and that its path would be down the newly mapped Roosevelt Avenue. They built along that stretch in anticipation of what was to come.
Antos said Queens’ development largely coincided with that of transit.
“The mentality was, if there’s a train here, we’re going to show the importance of transit by putting the transit first and showing that the neighborhoods will follow,” he said.
Construction came to a halt after the United States entered World War I in 1917, and by 1919, there was a “mad rush” to address a housing shortage, Karatzas said. To meet demands, the Queensboro Corp. from 1919 to 1924 sold its apartments as cooperatives rather than renting them out.
That was partially for economic reasons, Karatzas explained — builders hadn’t done much construction on the land they bought before the war, and their capital came from
So instead of co-ops, developers took a more profitable shift toward private homes. According to an excerpt from Karatzas’ book, “Jackson Heights: A Garden in the City,” on the JHBG’s website, Queensboro built English Garden Homes on more than 15 streets in the late ’20s, with front and rear gardens and brick construction.
They also were expensive, costing between $20,000 and $38,500. Prices increased as Queensboro kept building, which meant most New Yorkers, including groups facing discrimination, could not afford to live in Jackson Heights.
The group kept at it with private homes until around 1929, and then the stock market crashed.
Sunnyside Gardens
Sunnyside Gardens was built between 1924 and 1928 as the “working person’s response to Jackson Heights,” Antos said.
While Jackson Heights’ apartments appealed to middle- and upper-middle class folks, Sunnyside Gardens served mostly bluecollar workers, such as city employees, and public school teachers. Karatzas said it was
Forest Hills saw more development through the ’20s as infrastructure evolved and Queens Boulevard widened, as per the city Historic District Council’s Six to Celebrate program. The Gardens’ first apartment building, Forest Arms, was built in 1924. Other complexes also came to the Queens Boulevard corridor at that time. Q
The Towers complex in Jackson Heights was one of eight such “garden apartment” structures that the Queensboro Corp. built in the early 1920s. PHOTOS COURTESY JACKSON HEIGHTS BEAUTIFICATION GROUP
Early 20th century garden apartments, such as Jackson Heights’ Hawthorne Court, had interior gardens for residents’ communal use.
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1920s: hidden horse racing gems
Man o’ War was a star; the Wood Memorial launched
by Michael Gannon Senior News Editor
Horse racing already had been a regular fixture in Queens for 100 years as the nation left World War I behind and entered the Roaring ’20s — and it goes back to British rule in 1667 if one doesn’t count the period from 1802-21, when the state’s constitution banned the sport.
The legendary Union Race Course in Woodhaven, which opened shortly after the ban was lifted — the state’s compromise specified that horse racing could take place only in Queens — already had been gone more than 30 years.
Aqueduct opened in South Ozone Park in 1894, while the Jamaica Race Course opened with its one-mile track in 1903 on the site that now is Rochdale Village. An agreement formalized by New York State in 1899 placed Belmont Race Track in Nassau County.
The decade of the 1920s was an odd one for Queens thoroughbred tracks, in that it is hard, at first glance, to find its greatest stars and greatest achievements, which were lavished on some subsequent periods.
Two Triple Crown winners perfectly bracketed the decade.
In 1919, Sir Barton became the first thoroughbred to win The Preakness — it ran first until 1932 — the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes in the same season.
But it was not until 1930 that Gallant Fox would repeat the feat, leaving racing without a Triple Crown winner for 10 years, to date the sport’s third-longest drought.
Joining Gallant Fox in the 1930s were Omaha (1935) and War Admiral (1937).
The decade of the 1940s brought horses such at Whirlaway (1941), Count Fleet (1943), Assault (1946) and Citation (1948).
Then a quarter-century later racing’s popularity skyrocketed in the 1970s, with the mighty Secretariat (1973), Seattle Slew (1977) and Affirmed (1978).
But the 1920s still had their own moments and their own legends.
place in New York State, when he lost at Saratoga by a neck to frequent rival Upset, a horse he had beaten 11 days earlier, and would defeat again 10 days later.
For good measure, he defeated Upset again in the 1920 Dwyer Stakes in July, and in the Travers Stakes in Saratoga that August.
Jockey Clarence Kummer, who was in the saddle for Man o’ War’s last nine races — all victories — has an unfortunate personal affiliation with Queens off the track.
Retiring in 1928, he died in Flushing in 1930 after contracting pneumonia. He was only 31, and is buried in Mount St. Mary Cemetery. A two-time winner of both the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness, Kummer was named to the U.S. Racing Hall of Fame in 1972.
Perhaps the finest horse to grace Queens tracks during the 1920s was Man o’ War, a chestnut stallion hailing from Kentucky — where else? — who won 20 of 21 races in his career.
He also went a perfect 5-0 in the borough, winning one race at Jamaica Race Course and two at Aqueduct in the summer of 1919.
His two races immediately following his 20-length victory in the 1920 Belmont Stakes were wins at Jamaica in the Stuyvesant Handicap, and the Dwyer Stakes at Aqueduct.
He also won the 1920 Preakness at Pimlico in Maryland, but did not run in that year’s Kentucky Derby.
Man o’ War’s only career loss did take
If you’re not a horse racing fan, you probably don’t know about Eugene Wood.
But even if that’s the case, you’ve probably heard at least a passing reference in the odd radio or TV news sports report to the annual Queens horse race that was named in his honor in 1925, and has run in the borough ever since.
The Wood Memorial Stakes this year celebrated its 100th anniversary in Queens. It is one of the higher-profile tune-ups for 3-yearolds hopeful of heading to Kentucky’s Churchill Downs for the Derby, and the trophy is coveted by owners, trainers and jockeys alike.
The New York Racing Association, in a press release back in March celebrating the 100th anniversary of the race, referred to Wood as a New York State politician.
Published sources also say he was an influential Albany lobbyist and Tammany
But Wood was a racing enthusiast, too, and
a co-founder and past president of the old Jamaica Race Course. The race was initiated one year after his death.
Typical for the 1920s Queens horse racing scene, one has to dig a little to find some of the Wood Memorial’s early standouts.
The first winner was Backbone, who ran the 1-mile, 70-yard race in 1:43.40 — lengths have varied over the years. His winner’s purse was $7,600. By contrast, Rodriguez, who claimed the trophy last April, pulled down a cool $400,000.
The Wood Memorial quickly became part of thoroughbred horse racing history, and a starting gate for greatness.
NYRA’s press release in March said four winners have gone on to win the Triple Crown beginning with Gallant Fox. He would be followed by Count Fleet, Assault and Seattle Slew.
Eleven Wood Memorial winners have gone on to win the Kentucky Derby, though none since 2000.
The list includes Twenty Grand (1931); Johnstown (1939); Hoop Jr. (1945); Assault (1946); Foolish Pleasure, (1975); Bold Forbes (1976); Pleasant Colony (1981); and Fusaichi Pegasus (2000).
Wood Memorial winners earned trophies in the Preakness 12 times and the Belmont Stakes 16. Ten have been named Horse of the Year, and another 14 have been enshrined in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.
Another interesting piece of
Wood Memorial trivia is the most famous horse to lose.
Secretariat, the pre-race favorite in 1973, would finish third to Angle Light. Weeks later at Churchill Downs, “Big Red” set things straight, and Angle Light finished 10th in a race that Secretariat won by 2 1/2 lengths.
The Wood Memorial would run at Jamaica Race Course through the 1959 season, after which the track closed.
It has run at Aqueduct ever since, and will do so for the last time in 2026, when the Big A, which outlasted tracks that came before it and some that came after, is scheduled to close itself.
Belmont Race Track, presently undergoing a complete rebuild with a $550 million price tag, recently had a topping off ceremony with Gov. Hochul in attendance to celebrate the last part of the new steel frame going into place. Aqueduct, meanwhile, has been showing its age.
Aqueduct, aside from its regular season, has been hosting “Belmont at Aqueduct” since 2024. There had been hopes that the state would allow the Kentucky Derby to come to South Queens as it had from 1963 to 1967, when Belmont underwent its previous renovation. But it wasn’t meant to be.
The hardhats are scheduled to leave for the next job in fall 2026.
Horse racing will disappear from Queens shortly afterward, with Belmont expanding its season; and Aqueduct heading out to permanent pasture along with Jamaica Race Course, Union Course, Eclipse Course and Fashion Course — and all the great champions that ever raced there. Q
Hall insider.
Man o’ War, with jockey Clarence Kummer in the saddle, won 20 of 21 career races, including a perfect 5-0 record in Jamaica and South Ozone Park.
Man o’ War, right, holds off a hard-charging John P. Grier in the 1920 Dwyer Stakes at Aqueduct Race Track. KEENLAND LIBRARY PHOTO VIA THE DAILYRACING FORM
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Flashback: then and now
The view from Queens, in the ’ 20s and today
Trolley lines have yielded to bike lanes — though the car was king then and now — in Long Island City at the junction of Northern Boulevard, running left to right, Steinway Street, from which these photos were taken, and 39th Street, at upper left. The roof of the Standard Motor Products building, as it is known, once held the Karpen Furniture sign for the storied S. Karpen & Bros. manufacturing firm and now houses a rooftop farm. Anyone who knows who took the photo at left, on March 18, 1929, is asked to email missingphotocredit@gmail.com. PHOTOS VIA NEW
AND BY
Trolley tracks ran along Main Street in Flushing, too, as seen in the 1920s photo looking east down 37th Avenue. Still present is the building at left, though scaffolding makes it a little tough to tell in the recent image. A longtime bank, now Carat & Co., it was built in 1914 and later expanded. Gone are the meat market once next to it, and the liquor store and thrift shop across the street. So, too, are the ability to drive east on 37th and wooden-spoke car wheels. PHOTO VIA SEEOLDNYC.COM, LEFT; GOOGLE MAPS IMAGE
Clear across the borough is the corner of Northern Boulevard and Little Neck Road, now Parkway, in Little Neck. The north-south road’s name may have evolved since the photo at left was taken on May 22, 1927, and the east-west route may have gotten a bit wider, but the row of buildings on the north side of the boulevard remains. Several even retain their old facades. Out of view on the south side of Northern in the newer image are other venerable structures: The Shaffer Funeral Home and Chase bank building. Heavy traffic is nothing new on State Route 25A. PHOTO
Home, sweet home! The Queens Chronicle is located in The Offices at Market Plaza, i.e., within the Home Goods building in the rear of the Shops at Atlas Park in Glendale, the former Atlas Terminals. While the mall fronts on Cooper Avenue, 80th Street runs alongside it. The bridge over the railroad was built in 1936; the photo at left is from 1929, when the building was home to Walter J. Vogt and Co., which turned yarn into braids, chenilles and the like.
land? Queens
when this
Not anymore!
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second one.
Completely different from a century ago is the corner of Queens Boulevard and Broadway to the north and Grand Avenue to the south, in Elmhurst. Learn why there was a sign for Motor Parkway so far west of that historical roadway in 1928, when this photo is believed to have been taken, at tinyurl.com/ywfc4vzx.
PHOTOS COURTESY AL VELOCCI, VIA VANDERBILTCUPRACES.COM, NEAR RIGHT, AND BY STEVE FISHER
COURTESY JASON ANTOS, LEFT; GOOGLE MAPS IMAGE
PHOTO VIA ARRTS-ARRCHIVES.COM, LEFT; GOOGLE MAPS IMAGE
Astoria Lumber on Broadway at 43rd Street has been replaced by a post office, while the house next door in this March 12, 1929 photo has been replaced by a mixed-use building with a motorbike retailer. Though obscured in the new image by the utility pole, the roofline of the building at far right, across 43rd, shows it to be the same edifice as in 1929. PHOTO VIA SEEOLDNYC.COM, LEFT; GOOGLE MAPS IMAGE
Got
sure did, back around 1920
photo of the new 7 train viaduct along Queens Boulevard was taken.
In
foreground is the 33rd St.-Rawson St. station in Sunnyside, on the edge of Long Island City. The first square archway is where 33rd Street ends, while 34th Street runs beneath the tracks at the
PHOTO COURTESY LAWRENCE SAMUEL, LEFT; GOOGLE MAPS IMAGE
And the flag was still there! The historic Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks Lodge 878 at 82-20 Queens Blvd. in Elmhurst was recognized as an architectural gem when built and was the group’s largest clubhouse in the country. Today it belongs to a church, but the club remains, and just as the flag flies high above, the massive elk statue still stands tall at the door.
PHOTO, LEFT; GOOGLE
— caption text and photo selection by Peter C. Mastrosimone
Larger than life: a BP and DA
Queens’ Connolly and Newcombe
by Peter C. Mastrosimone Editor-in-Chief
Two of the biggest names in Queens politics in the Roaring ’20s had one thing in common: They both wound up in court.
One of them did so voluntarily.
That one was Richard S. Newcombe, the attorney and prosecutor who, in one of the most notorious criminal cases of all time, secured the convictions of Ruth Snyder and Henry Judd Gray, the “Double Indemnity” killers whose murder of Snyder’s husband led to a media frenzy, a popular novel, a hit film — and both of the defendants’ executions.
to 1929, holding the office, exactly 100 years ago, that Melinda Katz holds now.
Not only a prosecutor, Newcombe had been Queens commissioner of public works from 1916 to 1918, “managing to avoid scandal despite working under the corrupt Borough
President Maurice Connolly,” as the city Parks
Less inclined to appear in court was Maurice Connolly, who once seemed to be the Queens borough president for life, serving from 1911 to 1928, until he was taken down in a corruption scandal.
The Queens district attorney who presented the evidence against Connolly and is largely credited with bringing him down?
Richard S. Newcombe.
Newcombe was the elected DA from 1924
Department puts it on its page about Newcombe Square, where his name lives on. Really more a slim triangle than a square, the site sits at the junction of Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike, where Kew Gardens Road and 80th Road also meet.
It is right across the boulevard from the far western tip of the Queens Borough Hall property and just over a block from the criminal courthouse. It features a low semicircular brick wall fine for sitting, except that it’s a favorite of pigeons.
Connolly was not just known for the scandal that brought him down. He came into office as a reformer after his predecessor was removed by the governor, according to his 1935 obituary in The New York Times.
Born in Corona, he became an attorney at
age 21 and, during his long tenure as BP, oversaw “many important public improvements,” the paper said. But in December 1927, a thencity alderman, George Harvey, filed charges against Connolly related to sewer contracts, following protests by Queens homeowners against the high assessments they faced.
Although a special counsel was appointed, Newcombe still played a vital role as the case was developed and presented. It was not easy. One witness who was to be called, sanitation engineer William L. D’Olier, was found dead of a bullet to the head in Maspeth on Sept. 2, 1928. Though a grand jury convened by Newcombe determined he had been murdered, the case remained unsolved, and suicide was believed possible by many.
Connolly was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and served about a year in jail on Welfare Island, now Roosevelt Island. He died on Nov. 25, 1935 at age 54, and was buried in Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery in Flushing.
The year before Connolly was prosecuted, Snyder and Gray were found guilty of murdering Albert Snyder. The March 20, 1927 killing occurred in the Queens Village home where the Snyders lived. Gray was Ruth Snyder’s
lover. Before the murder, she had secured a life insurance policy under which she would get twice as much money if her husband were killed in an act of violence: double indemnity.
But the authorities saw through the lies, and Newcombe won convictions against both in a sensational trial. They were executed on Jan. 12, 1928 in Sing Sing prison. The heavily fictionalized novel by James M. Cain inspired by the case came out in 1943 and the acclaimed film noir, with far better-looking people in the lead roles, followed in 1944. Newcombe died at just 49 on May 9, 1930, with more than 1,000 mourners attending his funeral at his Forest Hills Gardens home. Q
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Queens Borough President Maurice Connolly, left, and District Attorney Richard S. Newcombe were key figures here in the 1920s. PHOTOS VIA
When Queens found its rhythm
Before swinging with legends, it hummed with promise
by Kristen Guglielmo Editor
In a decade when Harlem’s clubs pulsed with the rhythm of the Jazz Age, Queens stood quietly on the threshold of greatness.
While plenty of legends of the time later resided in Queens, including Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Charlie Mingus, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane, jazz music had not yet placed its mark strongly on the borough in the 1920s.
Musicians were drawn not to the borough’s stages, but to its wide streets and promise of home. Queens was tuning up, getting ready for future decades with the music and the legends who played it.
“Most of the real action and focus was coming out of Harlem,” said Clyde Bullard, a jazz producer with Flushing Town Hall.
“The influx of jazz musicians moving into Queens, I believe, really didn’t start until around 1923 and after that with Clarence Williams.”
visit him, and Louis Armstrong came up and really loved the openness of Queens, and that was kind of the genesis of starting this exodus of all these great musicians moving in,” Bullard said.
Williams’ Queens abode turned into a gathering place and community for more Black artists, musicians, writers and other notable figures of the time.
“I think as word started to spread, people were asking these great icons, ‘Where you living?’ and they would say, ‘Man, I’m in Queens. I’m in Addisleigh Park. I’m in Hollis. I’m in Sunnyside,’” Bullard said. “So people start moving to Queens because it was chic.”
Jason Antos of the Queens Historical Society, also the borough historian, echoed the sentiment.
Williams, a pioneering pianist, composer, publisher and entrepreneur, was among the first to see Queens’ potential.
Williams and his wife, singer Eva Taylor, settled in Jamaica in 1923, laying the groundwork for the neighborhood’s future as a jazz haven.
Throughout his career, Williams worked with icons such as Bessie Smith, Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins and Sara Martin. He is credited for inspiring Armstrong, among the most influential figures in jazz, to move to Queens in the 1940s.
“He asked Louis Armstrong to
“From what we know, even though there were all of these legendary figures living here and still more to come in the coming decades, there was really no jazz scene in the borough at the time,” Antos said. “There were, of course, speakeasies. They were very popular around the five boroughs in the 1920s because of Prohibition, and it was if there was jazz, it was there.”
He said that records for speakeasies at the time, naturally, are very scant.
“During the ’20s, in terms of entertainment, prohibition really put a damper on a lot of things,” Antos said. “There were so many beer halls, beer gardens and dance halls, as they called them. They were everywhere, all over Flushing, College Point, Whitestone, Corona, Long Island
City, Astoria, anywhere. But Prohibition just decimated all of them.”
While the greats mostly stuck to performing in Harlem at the time, it helped that Queens wasn’t too far from the action of all the busy, iconic venues, such as the Apollo.
“So you go, you play music, you make people happy, and you swing out of the club and you go back home to Queens, where it’s nice and quiet,” Bullard said.
One of the main Queens-based jazz musicians at the time was Bix Beiderbecke, an Iowa native whose genius helped shape the genre.
While most musicians who played solos prepared them ahead of
time, Beiderbecke enjoyed surprising his audience with improvisation.
Beiderbecke came to New York in 1927 as part of the acclaimed Paul Whiteman Orchestra, but his time in the World’s Borough was short and tragic. He died in his apartment, on 46th Street in Sunnyside, at just 28 in 1931.
“He had this fever, and he was delirious, so he played for like 12 hours on his trumpet, much to the chagrin of his neighbors in the apartment building where he was living,” Antos explained.
As the story goes, after 12 hours of music, Beiderbecke abruptly stopped playing his trumpet and ran
into the hallway.
“He said that there were people trying to kill him, trying to stab him to death,” Antos said. “He was very ill, and totally in a state of delirium. They summoned for a doctor, and by the time they got there, he was dead. ... His final performance was born out of delusion from fever.”
From the 1920s onward, jazz made its presence known in Queens. In the 1930s, Southeast Queens, including Addisleigh Park, became a hub for the genre and its artists, followed by Corona and East Elmhurst, with Fats Waller, Holiday, Gillespie and Fitzgerald taking up residency in the World’s Borough. Q
While the Jazz Age lit up Harlem, Clarence Williams, seen collaborating with blues singer Sara Martin at left, and Bix Beiderbecke were among the first to bring the genre to the World’s Borough in the 1920s. WIKIPEDIA PHOTOS
A literary ‘valley of ashes’
continued from page 4
“The entire place was super industrial and really, really depressing,” Antos said. A 60-foot ash heap even used to sit on the land where the New York Hall of Science stands today.
Corona residents referred to the train used to transport ash as the “Talcum Powder Express,” Antos said. It would spit up ash as it rattled along, leaving a white-grayish plume of dust in its wake.
Mounds of ash and garbage went right up to residents’ backyards, Antos said, attracting rats and other pests that then infested homes. Respiratory illnesses also were frequently reported, as remnants of burning garbage and ash contaminated the air.
Neighbors’ outrage, coupled with a dwindling ash industry after the Fire Department outlawed the use of fireplaces in high-rise buildings, led to the end of the city’s contract with the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company, Antos said. But its leaders were able to end things “on a high note” financially.
“They turned around and said, all right, we lost the contract. We’re out of business,” he said. “By the way, who’s going to remove all this stuff?”
The very same company that damaged the area for decades was tasked to clean it up in anticipation of the 1939 World’s Fair. The city even paid for it to do so.
In his 1925 novel “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the atmosphere of Flushing Meadows during that time, calling it a “valley of ashes.”
IMAGES VIA WIKIPEDIA
It didn’t become a park until after then-Parks Commissioner Robert Moses saw its potential and started eyeing it in the ’20s. He spearheaded the two World’s Fairs in 1939 and 1964 to bring his vision to life, but neither were quite profitable enough for him to do so.
Iconic structures from both World’s Fairs remain, including what is now the Queens Museum from the former and the Unisphere from the latter. Flushing Meadows Corona Park got its name that same year, and the rest is history. It’s the largest park in Queens, drawing crowds of more than nine million every year.
So it’s safe to say the locality Fitzgerald said “was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare of afternoon” has, well, risen from the ashes. Q
for By New Yorkers for Leroy Comrie
The Black burbs of the 1920s
Jamaica became the largest one in the nation
by Naeisha Rose Editor
The Roaring Twenties in America was a time of excess when fads reigned supreme and some were able to “eat, drink and be merry.”
Flapper girls danced the night away, men wore fedoras to emulate matinee idols of stage and screen and steamship travel was all the rage.
But for many Black folks — descendants of slaves, people migrating away from the South or leaving crowded cities — the focus was obtaining an aspect of the American Dream that had long been denied to them, homeownership, and in parts of Queens that was not simply a dream that endured, but a reality.
For Larry Samuel, author of “Queens: A History of the Most Diverse Place on Earth,” discovering records of Black homeownership in the 1920s was fascinating.
“I’m a historian and there are some great books about Brooklyn, Manhattan and one on the Bronx as well, but I felt there was no thorough history of Queens,” Samuel told the Chronicle. “Queens had an interesting story that hadn’t been told about how it developed in terms of property and housing.”
While going through journalistic and scholarly articles, along with a few news archives, he was able to glean that the World’s Borough had a more neighborhood feel compared to the other boroughs that were “sliced and diced into voting districts.”
“In Queens there were dozens of districts that each had its own character,” said Samuel. “I was amazed how ... Queens is so ethnically and racially defined — the other boroughs are as well, but compared to other places in the United States — but in Queens, every pocket of every neighborhood tends to have its own ethnic and racial mix. ... I primarily
focused on Jamaica and Corona because that was where most of the population was. Eighty percent of the borough’s African Americans were in Jamaica.”
The opening of the East River rail tunnels and extension of the subways, along with the growing popularity of the automobile and opening of the Queensboro Bridge, connected the borough to Manhattan and led to more people traveling here, resulting in both a population and economic boom, he said. The already extant Long Island Rail Road also facilitated movement.
“There’s open land, a lot of farmland in Queens up until World War I,” said Samuel. “Queens was mostly a place to grow produce, then developers discovered it and then realtors moved in, and then everybody moved in. It’s a great story that hasn’t been told before in terms of the Black population, because many people did not know about this dedicated real estate market.”
Forest Hills Gardens, Sunnyside Gardens and Jackson Heights were highly segregated, but Jamaica, Corona and a section of Flushing dubbed Black Dublin, were not, he said.
African-American real estate developers William Weir and John Hill helped Southerners, Harlemites and Bed-Stuyers, along with the descendants of slaves who worked on post Colonial farms, buy homes in Jamaica starting at $5,000.
“I haven’t lost a thing by looking out for the interest of my people in the purchase of real estate,” Hill said to the New York Amsterdam, an African-American newspaper. “I want to see my people ... looking forward without the discontent that comes from practices that in the past have left many of them discouraged. If I can do my part in helping towards this end and still manage to make a livelihood, I am satisfied.”
Together, Weir and Hill erected at least 50 homes in Jamaica by 1925, according to Samuel’s book.
The presold homes were bought by Blacks working in manufacturing, construction and on the railroad, and were built near Jamaica High School, which was the largest school in America in 1927 and had teaching roles for African-American women.
The area was home to Black Baptist and interdenominational churches and Polish- and Italian-American Catholics who faced discrimination.
Jamaica became the first predom-
inantly Black suburb in the country, and Amsterdam News reported that by the mid-1920s there was a population of about 12,000 Black folks.
Corona was also connected to Manhattan by mass transit and became another suburb for former Harlemites, who were tired of overpriced, rat-infested apartments and had to complain to racist landlords up to four times to fix issues in overcrowded complexes, said Samuel. About 1,200 Black folks made up the population of 5,000 that lived in there in 1925, according to his book.
“In Jamaica, Black people were mostly in Southside, but in Corona white people were living right next to Black people, which was very rare,” said Samuel.
ments for as low as a $250 instead of the typical $500.
“They had papier maché walls,” said Samuel. “It was significantly bad, even the city [officials] and the mayor came out to take a look at it.”
Jason Antos, executive director of the Queens Historical Society, said while Jamaica was the largest Black suburb, the first free Black community was in the Alley Pond section of Bayside as many of the population were fishermen and oystermen.
Little Neck Bay near Flushing Creek.
A lot of homes were powered by electricity thanks to Lewis Latimer, an engineer who improved the light bulb while working with Thomas Edison and who lived in Flushing from 1903 to 1928, said Antos.
“The elders, people in their 40s and 50s, who had radios would listen to ragtime music, a precursor to jazz music,” said Antos.
Other fishermen lived in Black Dublin on what is now Roosevelt Avenue between Main Street and College Point Boulevard in Flushing, he said.
When the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills Gardens refused to accept Black members, Daisy Reed formed the Corona Tennis Club near Black single- and twofamily homes that were going for $5,000 and $10,000, respectively, said the book.
“There was also a drama club,” as film and radio weren’t as popular as theater, said Samuel. “The Aldridge Players, which had star entertainment, was even on Broadway.”
There were also homes erected in Flushing by white real estate developers taking advantage of “colored buyers” and Catholic Irish folks who faced discrimination. They were cheaply built, but had down pay-
“Most were descendants of free slaves from after the Civil War,” Antos told the Chronicle.
Black folks were also leading services at Ebenezer Baptist Church in western Flushing or the AME Macedonia Church in the east.
“This country for a time was trying to wean society off of renting,” said Antos, who said the prices at one point were one and the same.
“There was a home fit for every income.”
Flushing was the most diverse, because along with Black and Irish folks, there were also Eastern Europeans, other European groups, Latin Americans, Jews, Quakers and Huguenots, and lower middle-class to wealthy people, said Antos.
Native Americans and Blacks lived in the tip of Douglaston and
The smallest Black enclave, Woodside, was briefly home to Anna Mangin, a product of the Great Migration and the inventor of the spatula.
The family left Queens in 1907, when Mangin became a widow, but before they left her husband, Andrew Mangin, opened up a coal yard, and she taught kids.
“By the late 1920s, Woodside became very suburban with a lot of people in the trades, teachers, people working in civil service, entrepreneurs, and people in real estate and the arts,” said Antos.
Another Black teacher, Mary Ann Elizabeth Shaw, was a philanthropist. Her Antiguan husband, John Shaw, was a real estate investor, minister at the AME church, teacher, inspector for the city Department of Public Works, deputy commissioner of taxes for Queens, political donor and Democratic district leader. Also a product of the 19th century, her work reverberated into the 1920s thanks to her charitable investments into what became a thriving Flushing Hospital and Flushing Library, said Antos. Q
Jamaica High School opened in 1927.
PHOTO COURTESY QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY / FREDERICK WEBER COLLECTION
Sutphin Boulevard and 110th Road in South Jamaica was home to the largest Black suburb in the country. Cars and mass transportation played a huge factor in that.
PHOTO COURTESY QUEENS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Lots of love for tennis in the ’20s
How the US Open became a fixture in the World’s Boro
by Naeisha Rose Editor
Queens wasn’t always home to the US Open, but the tennis tournament first came here in 1915 and then, after a brief hiatus in the early ’20s, set down its roots permanently starting in 1923 at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills.
The club opened with two dirt courts on Central Park West and 88th Street in Manhattan on June 11, 1892 and moved to 117th Street near Columbia University, according to the United States Tennis Association and various articles. Then it moved again.
By 1912, the sport, also known as “the net game,” “the ol’ tenten” and “jeu de paume,” became so popular the club formed a committee to find a new permanent location, according to its website. It fielded 53 offers and landed on three sites, the Bronx, Kew Gardens and Forest Hills.
The Forest Hills site was more than 10 acres and a few blocks from a Long Island Rail Road station. A $2,000 downpayment was made on a $75,000 mortgage and a Tudor-style clubhouse, costing approximately $30,000, was erected the following year, according to the club. By spring 1914, the world-class tennis center had design plans for 64 courts.
In 1915, the United States National Lawn Tennis Association Men’s National Championship (now the USTA’s US Open) moved from the Newport Casino in Rhode Island to the West Side Tennis Club.
The Newport club was “ill-kept” and an inconvenience for members and top players such as Karl Behr and Lyle Mahan to get to from around the nation, whereas the West Side club had great facilities, was near Manhattan and had space for larger crowds.
Even before the stadium was built, history regularly was being made on the club’s courts.
Suzanne Lenglen at the 1921’s Women’s National Championships, which the United States
nis Association hosted for the first time that year, in Forest
in the first two sets and defaulted in the third. America’s first tennis stadium soon followed.
The tennis association and the club financed its building with $150,000, said the WST club. Construction on the horseshoe arena started in April 1923 and it opened by August 1923.
The stadium had around 14,000 seats, and the Davis Cup Challenge Round and the Women’s National Championships were held the same year, according to online articles.
One key event occurred in 1921, when the USTA hosted the Women’s Champsionship for the first time.
That year, French sensation Suzanne Lenglen made her debut this side of the Atlantic for the tournament, which was being held separately from the men’s matches, as reported at usopen.org.
By August 1921, Lenglen already had played Wimbledon three times, the French Championships in Paris twice and the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp without being beaten and won several games across Europe, too.
The only thing to match “Lenglen the Wonderful” spirit, was her flamboyant fashion sense.
Raised by the French Riviera, the Parisborn Lenglen, wore colorful headbands.
Lenglen tried to unseat defending American champion Molla Mallory but was bested
“It was one of the first stadiums of its kind to be built in the United States,” Jason Antos, the executive director of the Queens Historical Society, told the Chronicle. “It was also a showcase for Queens neighborhoods like Forest Hills, Jackson Heights and Douglaston.”
For developers, the tennis tournament coming to the World’s Borough was a boon for those communities, he said.
“All of these places featured as part of their living accommodations healthy living [and] athletics,” said the historian. “Athletics was in the form of tennis and golf, so all these neighborhoods came complete with all their own tennis courts and golf courses. If you were a resident of the area, then you had access [to the facilities]. It was part of the lure, the attraction of living there. Forest Hills had that same framework. ... It just became ideal.
“I believe it was also built with the concept in mind of hosting the US Open there,” said Antos. “That is why it was there for so many years.”
Club member Kenneth Mackenzie Murchison and past club president Charles Scott Landers, prominent architects of the time, were behind the eagle-adorned façade and
grand arched colonnade of the stadium, reported the Forest Hills Times. The general contractor was The Foundation Co., which was known for its workmanship and speed of construction.
Before entering the world of general contracting, the firm was mostly known for substructures and superstructures, such as bridges, bridge piers, harbor developments, hydro electric developments, mine shafts and more.
The company developed the stadium with 175 tons of reinforced steel, which was a significant feat at the time, along with 5,000 barrels of cement, 2,700 cubic yards of gravel and 1,500 cubic yards of sand, said the FH Times.
In September 1923, Concrete, a trade publication, said it was “the only structure of its kind in America and second in the world,” to Wimbledon, which was built in
1922, reported the FH Times.
The QHS executive director noted that the stadium predates Shea Stadium, the Mets first home, by about 40 years.
It remained the site of the US Open until 1977. The championship tournament moved to Flushing Meadows Corona Park in 1978.
“When you had that sort of aspect in the neighborhood, it was synonymous with an upper-class lifestyle,” said Antos about the games and tournament. “Forest Hills Gardens when it opens was kind of part and parcel with the lifestyle.
“Tennis was a popular sport internationally and even here in the United States. ... For the planned community ... it became a huge factor of the economy.”
William “Big Bill” Tilden ruled the sport in the 1920s, said Antos. “He was a champion tennis player.”
Tilden, who would go on to be a writer, poet and sports columnist in his later years, dominated the sport winning the US Open Grand Slam singles titles from 1920 to 1925 and again in 1929. He also won the US Open Grand Slam doubles titles in 1918, 1921 to 1923 and again in 1927 and for mixed doubles in 1913, 1914, 1922 and 1923.
On the women’s side, where Lenglen was one star, Mallory dominated the sport from 1920 to 1923.
Helen Wills Moody emerged as a major talent in 1923 as the open was becoming a more permanent fixture at Forest Hills, marking a new era of the sport.
Moody won the US Open Grand Slam singles titles from 1923 to 1925, 1927 to 1929 and 1931. She won doubles titles in 1922, 1924, 1925 and 1928. She won mix doubles titles in 1924 and 1928.
“It’s an iconic part of New York City,” said Antos about the stadium, which is now largely a concert venue. “It put Queens on the map.” Q
Ten-
Hills. PHOTO VIA US OPEN.ORG
A century later, and still going
Some businesses have thrived for more than 100 years
by Kristen Guglielmo Editor
An iconic watering hole, a onestop shop for home improvement, a place for frozen treats and a store with delightful homemade confections. While they fill different needs for different people, the one thing they have in common is their endurance through the decades in the World’s Borough.
Among the oldest and most historic bars in New York, Neir’s Tavern, at 87-48 78 St. in Woodhaven, was established in 1828 by Cadwallader Colden, the manager of Union Course Racetrack, to serve gamblers and horsemen. Then called The Blue Pump Room, the business didn’t allow women inside.
The establishment was sold in 1835 and became The Old Abbey, until it was purchased by Louis and Julia Neir in 1898 and renamed Neir’s Social Hall. It was one of the first places to have a bowling alley in the early 1900s.
ations, the tavern was a lively hub, hosting events in its ballroom, which is said to have welcomed Mae West, an actress, singer, comedian and playwright who lived in Woodhaven at the time, as well as performances from big bands and showings of silent films. The upstairs social hall was also actively used.
“So during the 1920s, we were operating and doing business, but at the same time making booze and selling it secretly,” Gordon said.
Neir’s Tavern has gone on to be known as one of the most historic businesses in Queens and has featured in films such as “GoodFellas” and “Tower Heist.”
In the 1920s, Neir’s Tavern operated during the era of Prohibition.
“During Prohibition we, like many, continued to sell alcohol,” said Loycent Gordon, the owner of Neir’s Tavern. “In fact, it was discovered through newspaper articles that Louis Neir actually was arrested and was caught for selling booze and was fined.”
In addition to clandestine oper-
“We’ve evolved to become a place of movie buffs, history buffs, and now our future is really about becoming a place where it’s community-driven,” Gordon said.
Remnants of the locale’s past are present still at Neir’s today, and those interested are welcome to book a historic tour of the building at neirstavern. com.
About a short drive or 20-minute walk away from Neir’s Tavern lies another gem of the time, Schmidt’s Candy, at 94-15 Jamaica Ave.
Established in 1925 by Frank Schmidt, Schmidt’s Candy started off as an ice cream parlor and candy store, complete with a soda fountain, selling confections made
from old-school German chocolate recipes.
The shop is still standing today, now run by Margie Schmidt, the founder’s granddaughter, who works hard serving up handcrafted confections using the very same recipes that were beloved by customers back in the 1920s. Customers can stop in and get everyday classics, such as peanut butter cups or thin mints, or stop by during the
holidays for aptly themed treats. Schmidt even still uses the original, but replated, copper kettle and marble tables to make confections. And, just like back then, residents still visit with their families and children for delectable, highquality confections.
Eddie’s Sweet Shop, at 105-29 Metropolitan Ave. in Forest Hills, is among the longest-running ice cream parlors in the city. Originally called Witt’s, Eddie’s opened in 1925, but didn’t bear its current name until the 1960s, when Giuseppe Citrano took over as the owner.
The shop is now owned and operated by Citrano’s son, Vito, who still serves up the classics. Eddie’s serves up freshly made ice cream with a wide array of toppings, and makes its syrups in-house.
The equipment, dishware, decor and signage can transport anyone who steps into the shop back to the past for a moment of nostalgia.
Over in Astoria, Bartunek Hardware, at 28-07 23 Ave., has been an enduring family business for a century.
It was founded in 1925 by Henry Bartunek, whose father, Frank, assisted. The business was
passed on to Henry’s son, Edward, and Edward’s son, Gary, who told the Chronicle he started working there in the late 1970s.
“My grandfather started it at this location,” Bartunek said. “And I worked with my father, and my grandfather when he was like, 80.” His own son, Daniel, has taken over much of the day-to-day operations.
Much of the business’ success is owed to its great prices and its pride in helping the community.
In addition to hardware and general goods, the shop sells locks and household cleaning products, makes keys and even does rescreening for those with ripped window screens. Customers will often bring in items in need of repair, such as lamps, for service.
Earlier this year, the corner of 28th Street and 23rd Avenue was co-named Bartunek Way in honor of the store’s legacy.
At that time, Councilmember Tiffany Cabán (D-Astoria), who sponsored the co-naming legislation, said Bartunek Hardware is “the best of Astoria.”
Asked about the future of the shop, Bartunek said, “Well, my son’s here now, so we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully we keep going.” Q
Bartunek Hardware, left, was founded in 1925 and still remains a popular family business in Astoria, while Schmidt’s Candy owner Margie Schmidt keeps a memory of Frank Schmidt, right, the business’s founder and her grandfather, close by in a framed photo. PHOTOS COURTESY BARTUNEKHARDWARE.COM,
Neir’s Tavern, at 87-48 78 St. in Woodhaven, has stood the test of time after first opening in 1828. In the 1920s, Neir’s still secretly served alcohol despite Prohibition, according to owner Loycent Gordon, while maintaining its dayto-day operations.
