flushing3

The series of streets named for Flushing's former plant nurseries are in alphabetical order from A to R and while several well-known plants, Cherry and Rose, are present and accounted for, there are also some lesser-known ones there too, like Negundo, Franconia (45th Avenue's old name) and Laburnum Avenue (above). Oddly, the laburnum is a poisonous garden plant and has to be handled carefully.

And while there are some gorgeous houses like these Tudors on Laburnum Avenue...

...the ugly head of the mid-2000 decade is raising, as well.

CONTINUED FROM PART 2

One for the Good Guys

	A Victorian-era residence, the kind that have long been displaced in Flushing by boring, monolithic apartments and blond brick two-family homes (you know the type…concrete driveways and prominent water meters) has been preserved as a museum. One of the rare survivors, a small, two-story house at 149-19 38th Avenue painted pink and white, has not only been allowed to stand but has been restored to full Victorian-era glory.

It begins with its resident for 69 years, Betty Voelker-Orth, who was born in the house in 1926 and lived there until 1995, when she died from complications from an automobile accident. In her will, Mrs. Voelker-Orth, an English literature teacher, nature lover and birdwatcher, had left her house to the Queens Historical Society, the Queens Botanical Society and the Audubon Society with the proviso that it be converted into a museum, bird sanctuary and Victorian garden, a specific type of garden employing colorful tropical plants in season, along with ornamental elements such as urns, benches, gazebos and statuary. Mrs. Voelker-Orth left a good part of her fortune, which amounted to millions, to the prospective museum as well.

Completed in 2001, the museum stands as both a testament to Flushing’s old Victorian history and as a small nature retreat. You may contact the museum at 718-359-6227.

	You won't find a greater concentration of building signs and ads than in Flushing's Korean section, concentrated on Union Street north and south of Northern Blvd.


Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, Prince Street between 36th Avenue and 36th Road, is one of the oldest African American churches in New York City.

	Kissena Park, a large 234-acre tract bounded by Kissena Boulevard, Oak Avenue, 164th Street and Booth Memorial Avenue, is one-half “regular” city park with walkways and playgrounds, and half “natural” with bridle paths and heavily wooded areas where you shouldn’t be too surprised to see pheasants and rabbits darting about. It was developed gradually in the early years of the 20th Century (officially opening in 1910), with NYC slowly acquiring territory from private owners and police department property. Kissena Lake was once fed by streams, some of which emanated from the Flushing River, but it was cut off by the Works Progress Administration in 1942 and placed in a concrete retainer.

It is periodically cleaned of algae buildup and is stocked with fish that support herons, egrets, cormorants and even snapping turtles. “Kissena” is thought to be a Chippewa Indian term meaning “it is cold”; though the Chippewa lived in Michigan, 19th-century horticulturalist Samuel Parsons, whose tree grove is in the park at Rose Avenue and Parsons Blvd. probably named it. It is also home to New York City's only velodrome.

Sanford Avenue

Sanford Avenue extends throughout the length of Flushing, from a maze of chop shops near the Home Depot west of College Point Blvd. all the way east to Northern Boulevard at the Auburndale border. It is named for Nathan Sanford (1777-1838), a United States Senator from NY from 1815-1821 and from 1826-1831. He lived in Flushing for many years and built a large estate in 1836 that served as an asylum for the mentally ill after his death in 1838. The estate is now where the picaresque and endangered Waldheim enclave is now.

WAYFARING MAP: SANFORD AVENUE


Warren G. Harding Houses, Sanford Avenue and Kissena Blvd., were built in the early 1920s shortly after the death of President Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865-1923). It's likely the houses were named before the many scandals of his administration were uncovered, and today the name no longer appears on the exterior. A bust of Harding was placed on the triangle of green on the corner; it has long disappeared, and even the big trees that grew up next to the pedestal are long gone. The bust wound up at a museum in Ohio, Harding's home state.


		Daniel Carter Beard, founder of the Boy Scouts, has a pedestrian plaza in the Northern Blvd. median named for him, as well as a junior high school at Sanford and 147th Street. Beard, a longtime Flushing resident, feared the urbanization that would ensue when the IRT/BMT subway reached Flushing in 1928, and fled upstate when it did. The school, built in 1959, was recently given a more flattering paint job, it was institutional green for many years.
The Sanford Hotel, next to Harding Houses, opened around the same time. It was never a luxury hotel, but did host wedding receptions in its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. It is currently a welfare hotel.

Flushing 1900


A walk down Sanford Avenue reveals a handful of colorful, fanciful Victorian-era houses that remind you that the entire neighborhood was once filled with them.


Your webmaster has long admired this blue beauty at Sanford Avenue and 149th Place.

The forces of change in Flushing are relentless. A modern-day fraud has recently been built next to it, and clearly, the Blue Beauty's days are narrowly numbered.		Just across the street, Beth-el Presbyterian Church offers an example of how some of these mansions can be preserved, by becoming houses of worship.

A nearby apartment building at Sanford and Murray Street offers an interesting use of terra cotta.		Modern buildings can be functional and good-looking at the same time. Thomas Jefferson School, PS 22, (Sanford Avenue between Murray and 155th Streets) replaced an earlier building in 1967.

Kissena North

The region between Sanford Avenue, Kissena Park, 156th and 164th Streets isn't discussed much in the guidebooks (perhaps it will someday be known as Your Webmaster's Neighborhood, since it is). But it contains an eclectic mix of buildings in great and not-so-great shape. Officially a part of Flushing, I hereby dub it Kissena North.

Queensboro Hill

There's a small Flushing enclave cut off from the rest of the area by the Long Island Expressway, Cedar Grove Cemetery, and Queens College...which is pretty much the way its residents like it.


The Unisphere seems to rise here like a second moon.		While Queensboro Hill seems to have an older housing stock in spots, like on 136th Street...


	...much of the housing seems to exhibit a 50s or 60s vibe. These homes avoid repetition and blandness by varying pastel coloration. White, light blue, pink etc.


According to legend, a young folk singer from Hibbing, Minnesota briefly lived on 150th Street near Reeves Avenue shortly after arriving in New York in the early 1960s.

	Kissena Blvd. north of the Long Island Expressway. Sometimes, Forgotten NY is so easy, a caveman could do it. Some say a caveman already does it!

Sources:

Peter Zaremba is one of those two-career kind of guys. For over 20 years he has been the lead shouter of the NYC band The Fleshtones, and his excellent essay about the remains of Flushing of his youth is contained in the Time Out New York Book of New York Walks. BUY this book at Amazon.COM

Flushing 1880-1935, James Driscoll, Arcadia Press 2005
BUY this book at Amazon.COM

Photos taken summer 2005-spring 2006; page completed June 19, 2006.

erpietri@earthlink.net

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