northern

CONTINUED FROM NORTHERN BLVD., FLUSHING, PART 1

WAYFARING MAP: NORTHERN BOULEVARD, FLUSHING


Flushing's Armory, opened in 1905, is smallish as NYC armories go, but it is the only castle-shaped armory in Queens (a large armory in Jamaica is more Deco in construction). It has been home to the National Guard, high school proms, and the NYPD. This is the shorter of its two towers. A small piece of the Cornucopia Masonic Lodge can be seen at left.		Union Street has a cornucopia of signs covering its commercial buildings both north and south of Northern Blvd. in Flushing's Koreatown. Is this the practice in South Korea?

I've done a couple of pages on Flushing, but I rarely feature historic Flushing High, a landmarked Collegiate Gothic building dating to 1915. It resembles CCNY's Shepard Hall. It's difficult to photograph Flushing High since it's surrounded and shaded by tall cypress trees, and in late 2006, it was covered in scaffolding for a restoration.

A couple of Flushing Freedom Trail signs remain here and there, but the red line painted on the sidewalk connecting the Quaker Meetinghouse, John Bowne House, Kingsland Mansion, etc. has faded away. The Trail was proposed by Flushing High teacher and President of the Bowne House Historical Society Margaret Carman (1890-1976), a relative of Revolutionary War Captain "Lighthorse Harry" Lee* and Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

*Captain Lee described George Washington thusly in an address to the Continental Congress in 1793: "First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen."


A Northern Boulevard facade has been removed, revealing a piece of an older sign beneath.		I can't read the script but I like the pictures.


	The Flushing YMCA bus shelter ads reflect the recent demographics of this now-heavily Asian neighborhood. The Y, at Northern Blvd. and Bowne Street, was built in 1925. According to the YMCA website, the organization was founded in 1844 and in 1891, James Naismith invented basketball under the YMCA's employ. (LEFT) Conversely, Flushing's Irish seem to be invited to leave the good old USA and ride the Celtic Tiger!


The "professionals" referred to on the old-school sign are, of course, physicians.


	Here's an ancient campaigner on Northern just east of Bowne. It features a terrific hand-lettered copy of Futura Condensed, almost matching it stroke for stroke.


Northgate Towers, just west of Parsons Boulevard, is Northern Blvd.'s handsomest apartment complex on a stretch of the road where they're quite common.		1950s-era union hall at Northern and Parsons. A former Horn and Hardart, I am told.


The SE corner of Northern and Parsons features a mystery building with dormers and a clock tower, now home to a variety of businesses. I'd say it was once a bank; is that a deposit window on the Parsons side?

The stopped clock tower contains a final mystery...the number "34" on the weathervane. Decades ago, plans were drawn...designers sweated over blueprints...artisans struggled to piece together this intricate cupola, with its columned dome, 4-faced clock, and mysterious numbered vane. Today, only your webmaster wonders about it. Could "34" be the year of construction?


	Parking lots (and the undersides of overpasses) are often repositories of the streetlighting designs of yesterday. A Northern Blvd. parking lot off Parsons features a pair of General Electric M400's once NYC's standard luminaire. Meanwhile, a plethora of signs, Korean and English, festoon a nearby pole.

	Northern Boulevard doesn't give up its mysteries easily. This is the last of its older residential buildings, its carriage driveway long overgrown with weeds. I've never seen anyone enter or exit and in my 13 years in fab Flushing, I've never seen any activity of any kind here; there's always been a chain-link fence surrounding the property, which was today open for some reason, yet I detected not a soul in sight. Apparently its owner has declined to sell it all these years. A shame. You can build 2 or 3 Fedders Specials here.


You say you like this building, the Greystone, on 149th Street just north of Northern but there's no vacancies?		Well, there's one just like it around the corner on the boulevard. Undoubtedly, the two had the same developer, probably between 1900-1920.


When it reaches 150th Street, Northern Blvd. presents us with some anachronisms. An old dormered building occupied by a porno video palace is apparently on its last legs and may be marked for demolition, while next door, there's a lean-to home to a thriving locksmith. This is possibly the smallest freestanding building on Route 25A/25's 100-mile length.

So nice, I'll show it twice...a classic blue and white directional sign pointing traffic to the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, completed in 1936. While the Whitestone Parkway connected Northern Blvd. to the bridge at the start, the bigger Whitestone Expressway was not built until 1958. Till then, from eastern Flushing, two-lane 150th Street went through north to Cross Island Parkway and was a major route to the bridge. An identical sign can be found a couple of blocks south at Sanford Avenue and 150th. Contrast with the newer similarly colored bus stop sign.

Continuing Northern Blvd.'s unlikely fishing supplies theme, near the north shore but a considerable distance from water. (just east of 150th Street)

(RIGHT) at Murray Street. Bugler, according to lore, is the #1 selling brand of loose tobacco in American prisons.


I'd guess this is an Italian social club, but they seem to have moved out. The entablature is very unusual: a tower surrounded by 5 dice, each presenting, in order, 1 through 5 pips, topped by a crown. It is the Conversano coat of arms.


Northern Blvd. becomes a mini auto row east of Murray Street (and again at Crocheron and 162nd, with an R & S Strauss there). Lots of Firestones have a go-go Fifties kind of feel but Auto Zone has abdicated all pretense that their premises is a building at all; it's simply an object that holds auto parts.

The beginning, or end, of Roosevelt Avenue at Northern Blvd. and 156th Street. Reverse course and travel west far enough on Roosevelt and you will pass through Corona, Jackson Heights, and Woodside; at Queens Boulevard, Roosevelt Avenue becomes Greenpoint Avenue and runs through Blissville before crossing the viscous Newtown Creek and entering its namesake Brooklyn neighborhood, finally ending at the East River just past the old Eberhard Faber pencil factory. You will be shrouded under an el most of the way, and incidentally, pass by Nancy Reagan's childhood home near 149th Place.

Roosevelt Avenue was created in 1915 and named for President Theodore when the IRT el was built, and a roadway was conveniently built under its right of way. The road became the dividing line between Jackson Heights and Elmhurst as local streets radiating from it were cut through, and in the 1920s beautiful garden apartments were built there as the el was able to bring workers to Manhattan within 30 minutes.

When the el was extended to Flushing's Main Street through a tunnel in 1928, a local route, Amity Street, was widened as an extension of Roosevelt all the way to its confluence with Northern. Roosevelt Avenue, and its el, have been described as the most ethnically diverse piece of real estate on the planet since along the route can be found dozens of ethnic enclaves from around the planet.


	Just past Roosevelt Avenue, there are the remnants of the go-go Fifties and Sixties again, with a drive-in orthopedic shoe store across the street from a drive-in dry cleaners. I love that Great Scot sign.


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The tallest building in the area, at 157th Street and Northern Boulevard, is St. Andrew Avellino Church, constructed in 1940.

This page was photographed October 15, 2006, and recorded October 22.

erpietri@earthlink.net