flushing2

Where it has been allowed to remain, Flushing has a wealth of varied architecture. Here on Bowne Street and Delaware Avenue, near Waldheim (itself a bastion of early Victorian styles gradually succumbing to modernity) we have a frame house with bay windows and Ionic-columned porch...contrast with the 1950s special across the street with the carport in front and timbered fence.

Just a few blocks away, on 45th Avenue, here we have the ugliest building in Flushing (and from the 1960s on there has been an ongoing uglification of the neighborhood)...believe it or not, this is, or was, a doctor's office.

Across 45th Avenue we have the House of Boon. Minutemen fans? Buddhist temple.

CONTINUED FROM FLUSHING PART 1


At Parsons Blvd. and 37th Avenue, a block away from Kingsland Manor and the Queens Historical Society, there's a building whose owners are, shall we say, somewhat whimsical. You first notice an eagle on the roof corner...

But then you notice...



Perhaps Tony Rosenthal got the idea for his Alamo tilted cube at Cooper Square from this place. The place seems to be a depository for both kitsch and modern art.

The Lion King and the Little Mermaid are there too.

Show the Bowne-s

Bowne House, 2006 and 1850. Gotham Gazette; Flushing 1880-1935, Arcadia Press

See ForgottenTour 21 for a description of this, the oldest building in Queens--constructed in 1661.

Unexpected Flushing

Flushing became NYC's second Chinatown beginning in the 1980s and is now home to thousands of Chinese as well as Koreans. But smack in the middle of town you'll still find some surprises...


The New York Armenian Home, 137-31 45th Avenue, opened in 1948. "The Armenian Home, on 45th Avenue in Flushing, opened in 1948 and has long housed many [survivors of the April 1915 Turkish massacre] who escaped by playing dead, fleeing or other means. Most of the residents are from families decimated by the genocide, but only a half dozen -- all in their 90's -- actually escaped it as children. "The most recent death of a survivor was in August [2004]: Lucy Derderian, age 103, who ''only survived the genocide because her mother was smart enough to hide her under the dead bodies during a massacre,'' said Aghavni Ellian, the home's executive director."--from Corey Kilgannon's NY Times story, April 23, 2005
		The Russian Orthodox Holy Annunciation Church, with its brilliant silver dome, 42-67 147th Street. It was originally St. John's Lutheran Church and dates to the 1890s.

A Vanished Railroad, a Vanished Creek, and a Botanical Garden

This 1928 Rand McNally map of southwestern Flushing bears only a passing resemblance to today's map. Crommelin and Peck have been severely truncated; Flushing (Ireland Mill) Creek, which once connected the Flushing River to Kissena Lake, has been rerouted underground; and the Queens Botanical Garden now occupies most of the center of the map. Elder and Peck Avenues still twist as they once did along the creek.

Crommelin and Peck Avenues once bordered the Central Railroad of Long Island, built in 1873 by department store magnate Alexander T. Stewart to connect the Flushing and North Side Rail Road (now the Port Washington LIRR branch) to a new development of Stewart's in central Nassau (still Queens County when built) Stewart named Garden City. Few remnants of the CRLI remain--it ran passenger service between Flushing and Garden City for only 6 years before just a short spur to Creedmoor was retained from the 1870s through the 1950s. The only reminders are street layouts and the shape of Kissena Corridor Park.



Crommelin Street, now the northern end of the Queens Botanical Garden, defines the old path of the Central Railroad.

Queens Botanical Garden

The Garden, accessible from gates on Main Street and Elder Avenue and also from a pedestrian ramp from Flushing Meadows-Corona Park over College Point Blvd., got its start (as did the park) at the 1939-40 World's Fair. Smallish compared to the New York Botanical Garden (in the Bronx) Staten Island Botanical Garden (in Snug Harbor) and Brooklyn's Botanic Garden (no -al, thank you) Queens' official garden nonetheless features bee, bird and woodland gardens, an herb garden and pinetum, an arboretum, a wedding garden and seasonal displays of tulips, roses, annuals and mums. It's open six days a week and is free of charge. It has been in its present location, atop the landfilled Flushing Creek, since 1963.

The Gardens remind us of Flushing's long horticultural heritage. In 1735, father and son Robert and William Prince established the first commercial plant nursery in the USA and built it into a thriving business; the then-unpolluted Flushing River enabled the Prince family to ship plants all over the East Coast. The nursery later became the Linnaean Gardens, named for Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, who established the Latin nomenclature used to classify plants and animals. The Bloodgood, Parsons, King and Murray families also operated plant nurseries in Flushing in the 1800s. These businesses were gone by the 20th Century as Flushing became more built-up, but the named streets, starting with Ash Avenue and ending with Rose Avenue, recollect Flushing's former horticultural glory, and the arrival of the QBG in 1963 was the final piece.


	This page was written in June 2006 when the Jackson and Perkins Rose Garden is in full swing. from the website: "The company's mail order business resulted from a garden exhibit Jackson & Perkins set up at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Entitled "A Parade of Modern Roses," the display was a huge success, and visitors from all over the nation purchased roses but didn't want to carry them home. They asked the company to mail the roses instead, and told their friends back home of the convenience offered in receiving roses by mail. Orders began to pour in from all over the nation, which Jackson & Perkins began to fill by mail. A new way of commerce in plants was born."
	When Bulova, which is still located in Queens (along the BQE on the border of Astoria and Jackson Heights) presented this sundial to the QBG it still had its gnomon, but by now, well, it's been good to gnomon you.

Flushing River

If you've taken the FNY Gowanus Canal circumnavigation, you've seen Industrial Waterway Lite. The real heavy-duty action is here on the Flushing River (which is really a short creek originating underground in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and emptying into Flushing Bay.

New York Magazine: "The Flushing River—like the Gowanus Canal, but bigger—sluggishly flows two blocks from Main Street. The polluted waters are being cleansed, and several developers are planning pieces of a once-laughable Flushing River Esplanade flanking the Roosevelt Avenue bridge."

Forgotten New York: in what parallel space-time continuum universe is that gonna happen?

The mighty Flushing, which ought to be what New York Magazine wants it to be, is flanked by the junkyards and auto parts emporiums lining Willets Point Boulevard (many people think Willets Point is where the #7 Shea Stadium stop is; it is actually just west of Fort Totten, and the discrepancy has arisen because the subway stop says "Willets Point" instead of "Willets Point Blvd.") and the thoroughly impersonal College Point Blvd., whose highlight is Western Beef now that the Candlewood Inn strip club was raided and closed a few years ago. Your webmaster was not a patron. Though upscale condos are sprouting on College Point Blvd. and 40th Road, it would take a miracle to create a San Antonio-style Riverwalk on the Flushing.



Views of the Flushing River and downtown Flushing from the Northern Blvd. bridge. Conditions on the pedestrian walk (accessible through two lanes of rushing traffic) have improved drastically from the mid-1990s when a rope separated the interpid walker from a 20-foot drop into the weeds; a chain link fence has been raised.
	Sculling anyone? Here's the Wahnetah Boat Club, the Flushing River just south of Northern Blvd. (then Bridge Street) in 1890. (Before about 1930 everything was sepia-toned; the world did not turn color until 1966 or so). Can you believe what the Flushing turned into? photo: Flushing in Early Photographs, Allen Bozeman 1978

Flushing has some very old churches, from the Quaker Meetinghouse on Northern Blvd. (1695) to St. George Episcopal (1853) to the 1890s First Dutch Reformed on Bowne Street and Roosevelt Avenue.



The First Baptist Church, Sanford Avenue and Union Street, isn't actually the "first" First Baptist; the original was on Union Street south of Northern Blvd. When the present structure was built in 1890 the original church, located in the "V" formed by Main Street and Kissena Blvd., served a stint as the town library. (The parish house, above right, is also one of the oldest buildings on Union Street).
		A look at the St. George Church cemetery, 38th Avenue near Main Street, reveals some names seen on area street signs, Jonathan Peck for example.


The pace of change in Flushing has been so quick in the 20th Century...and especially since the 1960s...that any older building seems ancient. The magnificent Free Synagogue of Flushing, Kissena Boulevard and Sanford Avenue with its Ionic columns and stained-glass windows, has been here "only" since 1929 but seems much older.
	Next door to the synagogue, on Sanford Avenue, is a building formerly known as the Hoffman Mansion but is now the Windsor School, established in 1969, serving as a middle, high and graduate school.


After 1928, when the then-BMT/IRT elevated (now the #7 train) arrived, the area surrounding the station, Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street, gave rise to several beautiful apartment buildings. This is Sanford Arms, on Union Street just south of Sanford. The gorgeous gold panelling lines the passageway to the inner courtyard.

Franklin Avenue

Community activist Paul Graziano:

Franklin Avenue predates Waldheim considerably, with some of the oldest structures left in Flushing. One of those structures is purported to be the Bowne family's coachman's residence, having been built around 1680. It is slightly askew to the street, and shows great age. The others were built between 1840 and 1915 - some are in beautiful condition, others are more worn. All in all, what is left of the block is in fairly good shape. It is worth designating these and a few other structures adjacent to Waldheim in order to create a context in which the estate subdivision was developed, as opposed to, ultimately, consign the whole area to a the fate of what Elliot Willensky would have called a "sea of red-brick forever."

I have a feeling the house on the right is the coachman's house: it's rather smaller than the rest of the Franklin Avenue houses; unfortunately, it's now an aluminum siding special.


Price Dental, Roosevelt Avenue between Main and Union Streets.


The main branch post office in Flushing, with its marvelous marble columns, was opened in 1934. During the week, stop inside for a look at Vincent Aderente's gorgeous murals depicting Flushing throughout the centuries. Since there were lots of uniformed security around, your webmaster was too chicken to actually attempt photography. It's just south of Sanford Avenue on Main Street.

Weeping Beeches

		Flushing's original Weeping Beech Tree was brought to Flushing from Belgium by Samuel Bowne Parsons in 1847 and planted on the grounds of the Parsons plant nursery. Kingsland Mansion, now home of the Queens Historical Society, was moved adjacent to the tree in the late 1920s. The tree was declared a living landmark in 1966 and survived until 1997. Cuttings from the original tree ultimately produced the specimens you see not only in the original Weeping Beech's old garden... Flushing 1880-1935, James Driscoll, Queens Historical Society

	...but in the Bowne Playground on Sanford Avenue and Union Street (left).... ...and also in an auto customizing shop on Sanford Avenue and 162nd Street...
		There are a couple of little ones in a yard at 161st and 43rd Avenue, a couple of blocks from chez webmaster. It's likely they all descend from that long-ago 1847 import from Belgium.

The Man With the Horn



Louis Armstrong (1900-1971) is buried not in his native Louisiana but in Flushing Cemetery, not very far from Corona, where he made his home with his wife Lucille from 1943 until his death.

The cemetery's main gate is located on Pidgeon Meadow Road and 46th Avenue. It's open to the public most days. Besides Louis, Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993), the great jazz trumpeter, saxophonist Johnny "Rabbit" Hodges (1906-1970), financier Bernard Baruch (1870-1965), Vincent Sardi (1885-1969), founder of Sardi's, the prominent showbiz eatery, and the charismatic minister/politician Adam Clayton Powell Senior (1865-1953) are here as well. Flushing Cemetery has been here since 1853.		Directly across the street at 46th Avenue and 164th Street you could tell there was a gas station here once...Sky Chief was once a Texaco brand, first sold in 1938. "Advertised as a product "for those who want the best," Texaco Sky Chief™ proves to be a fitting companion for the reformulated Havoline® motor oil. Texaco Sky Chief™ and Fire Chief™ gasolines remain the company's primary gasolines for decades." --Chevron

THERE'S LOTS MORE FLUSHING IN PART 3

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