JAMAICA ESTATES ODDITIES

By SERGEY KADINSKY
Forgotten NY correspondent

 

Stockholm Street isn’t the only yellow-bricked road in Queens — a short stretch of Foothill Avenue at 193rd Street in Jamaica Estates boasts bricks, as well. There are also a couple of red-bricked roads in Jamaica, as well.

 

Further east, Foothill Avenue encounters a loop formed by Clover Hill Road and Clover Place; Clover Hill Road (above) still has a patch of Belgian-blocked surfacing.

 

At Hillside Avenue and 193rd Street is a memorial, flagpole and entrance marker for Hollis Park Gardens. It the marker and traffic mall resembles similar ones for Prospect Park South, perhaps it was the same architects involved. Foothill Avenue and Hillside Avenue mark the terminal moraine of the last ice age.

Look closely at the marker and you’ll see that it describes 193rd Street by its pre-grid name, Hollis Park Boulevard.

 

The Hollis World War Memorial was installed at the northern side of Hillside Avenue at 193rd Street in 1920. It lists all Hollis residents killed in World War One, including those who served in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Canadian Forces and wartime service through the American Red Cross and YMCA. The plaque on a stone monument is flanked by a flagpole.

 

The flagpole has a small shield plaque in honor of local son Robert Pellicane, a hero of the Pacific Theater during World War Two who died in a training flight in 1950.

Both Hollis Park Gardens and Holliswood were the products of Frederick W. Dunton (1851-1931), who had been the supervisor of the Town of Jamaica and the treasurer of the Long Island Railroad. He acquired 136 acres to the east of Jamaica for a suburban development. He named the two developments after his childhood hometown in New Hampshire.

1/11/16