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The Last of the Matinecoc, Douglaston
Zion Church, on Northern Boulevard east of Douglaston Parkway, was first completed in 1830 on plans from Trinity Church architect Richard Upjohn. Wynant Van Zandt, one of Douglaston’s first prominent...
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Watching Waldheim, Flushing’s Victorian Enclave
Flushing’s architecture becomes rather drab once you depart from the historic areas along Northern Boulevard or just south of it. Most of the idiosyncrasies and varied elements have been stamped out...
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Zion Church, Douglaston
Nearly 20 ForgottenFans enjoyed Forgotten New York’s Little Neck-Douglaston tour this past weekend. Unusually for recent tours, this time the weather was threatening, but rain only started falling as...
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A Walk in Sunnyside
The turn-of-the-century English Garden City movement of Sir Ebenezer Howard and Sir Raymond Unwin served as the inspiration for Sunnyside Gardens, built from 1924-1928 from Skillman Avenue north to...
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Voelker-Orth Museum and Victorian Garden
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...
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They Who Control the Spice: Reusing Elmhurst’s E.R. Durkee Spice Factory
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...
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Magnificent Middle Village Auto Repair Shop
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...
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Another One Bites the Dust: West Chemical Building, Long Island City
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...
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Grand, Baby! My Favorite Newtown Creek Bridge
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...
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Queensboro Bridge Lamp Post: Safe and Sound
Remember when I told you about the time that I found a missing piece of the Queensboro Bridge? The post ended with a promise that the Roosevelt Island Historic Society had made to bring the item back...
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East Elmhurst and the Lent-Riker-Smith House
There’s a little parcel of a neighborhood east of Astoria and north of Jackson Heights, east of the bail bonds offices of Hazen Street, north of the whizzing Grand Central Parkway and west of LaGuardia...
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Long Island City Is One of the Historic Districts Council’s “Six to Celebrate”
Yesterday the Historic Districts Council announced its annual “Six to Celebrate” list. These are six neighborhoods the HDC believes merit preservation and attention, and they are selected from...
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Blackwell Mansion Door, on Display at the Greater Astoria Historical Society
In 2007, the Brooklyn Museum donated a colonial relic to the Greater Astoria Historical Society — a door that was part of the historic Blackwell Mansion in Ravenswood, Queens, likely built in 1730 by...
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Roger, Ahles: Two Bayside Beauties
On the west side just south of 39th Avenue, we find the venerable fish-scale mansard roofed John William Ahles House (built in 1873). According to longtime Bayside historian Joan Brown Wettingfeld, in...
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Arctic Neck: Little Neck in Winter
I may not have expressly stated it previously, but even though I am able to function in summer, the heat and humidity wears me down to a nub by Labor Day every year; and I don’t feel fully dressed...
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Long Island City Museum Wins Prestigious Preservation Award
The New York Landmarks Conservancy has bestowed one of its highest honors to a Queens arts gallery. On April 30, the SculptureCenter will receive the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award, which recognizes...
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On the Trail of History: Queens’ Remaining New York State Historical Markers
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....
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A Walk in Woodhaven
The community of Woodhaven lies just east of the undefended border between Brooklyn and Queens. It’s a fairly large neighborhood located between Forest Park on the north, Liberty Avenue on the south,...
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A Walk in Jackson Heights
In a borough largely ignored by NYC’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, the magnificent garden apartments of Jackson Heights are a happy exception. Today’s Jackson Heights is a neighborhood of...
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An Insider’s Guide to Queens’ Own Broadway
There’s a Broadway in every borough. The most famous runs the length of Manhattan and continues into the Bronx and Yonkers beyond that; another forms the border of Bedford Stuyvesant and Bushwick in...
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