		It's hard to say why, but the definitive history of Flushing has yet to be written. Plenty has been written about Flushing's rich past centuries ago, with its struggles over religious freedom in its very early days. But very little has been said of what Forgotten NY considers to be the rape of Flushing...the wholesale destruction of its original housing stock in just the last fifty years. As late as the 1960s, Flushing still bore traces of its small town origins, as one family homes contrasted with Victorian mansions on streets once named Lincoln and Amity.
Bowne House, Bowne Street and 37 Ave., photo: Gotham Gazette See FORGOTTENTOUR 21 for details on this 17th-Century structure

But just as immigration from China, Korea and India revitalized what had become a slumping backwater, that progress had a dear price to pay--just as Flushing's population became more diverse, its housing stock became what has to be the most monolithic, unimaginative and downright boring in New York City, with block after block of apartment buildings that are indistinguishable from each other. The change had begun after World War II, when development begun when the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge was constructed resumed in earnest.

There are still pockets of the old days remaining...but more and more of them succumb to the wrecker's ball every year, including two vintage 1890s Single Style Victorians this very year on Roosevelt Avenue. This Forgotten page will try to preserve in pixels what the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission is sometimes powerless to preserve in bricks and mortar.

GOOGLE MAP: FLUSHING

The Going Gets Trough

In 1909, the auto was beginning to make inroads on America's highways. But horsepower was still pretty much the way to get around. That year, Edith Bowdoin presented this concrete horse trough to the ASPCA. Incredibly it is still on Northern Blvd., in the center median at Union Street.
WAYFARING MAP: NORTHERN BLVD.

Flushing's northern boundary, Northern Boulevard, runs along the course of an old Indian trail out to the north fork of Long Island. It's had a wide center mall in Flushing since the turn of the century (the 19th/20th, I mean).

Peter Zaremba, writing in the Time Out Book of New York Walks:

The ill-fated Nathan Hale was said to travel by here on his covert mission during the Revolution, and F. Scott Fitzgerald describes Gatsby and his cortege passing this way making for their Long Island estates.

One of NYC's few Spanish-American War memorials is this flagpole at Main St. and Northern Blvd. The park behind it is named for Daniel Carter Beard, father of the Boy Scouts. The flagpole has since been restored.

Still on Northern Blvd. is the pink marble World War Memorial and behind it, crenelated castle towers of the NY State Armory, dating to 1905.

WAYFARING MAP: NORTHERN BLVD.

On Northern Boulevard, turn right on Bowne Street. On a brick apartment building on the north side of the street, with the address being the dashed one that Queens now employs (36-XX) you see a reminder that Bowne Street used to be Bowne Avenue and carried a much shorter house number...

Walk south on Bowne Street and notice the Bowne House at 37th Avenue; it has been here since 1661, when all around it was rolling hills and meadows. (I have included its story on the above Tour page, linked above). Continue south to Ash Avenue and then take a left. Dorothy, it looks like we're not in Flushing any more.

WAYFARING MAP: BOWNE ST.

Ash Avenue's previous incarnation as Ash Street is proven on the sidewalk.

We are now in a Flushing subneighborhood known as Waldheim, but it certainly wasn't named for the controversial UN Secretary-General.

Flushing is an old neighborhood, and there is evidence of previous house numbering system on several buildings, such as this one at 41st Avenue and 150th Street. When it was built, both streets had names, not numbers. The Asian characters on the awning are evidence of the new Flushing.

Cherry Avenue near Parsons

The original Waldheim area went from Sanford Avenue at the north to Rose Street [now Avenue] on the south, Kissena Boulevard on the west to Murray and 156th Street on the east. The Wallace-Appleton Company bought the 10 acres from the estate of Allan MacDonald; thick woods stretching across the site inspired the name Waldheim. The name disappeared for a time after 1916 (after the developer's bankruptcy, and anti-German feelings after the First World War).

FNY WALDHEIM PAGE

WAYFARING MAP: Waldheim

Cherry Avenue near Parsons

Today, Waldheim stretches between Franklin Avenue on the north, 45th Avenue on the south, Bowne Street on the west and Parsons Boulevard on the east.

The AIA Guide to New York City:

Porches, chimneys, mansards and gambrels; Shingle Style, Queen Anne, and eclectic miscellany. A wonderful small district that, it is said, was preserved by a "conscious preservation" action in the late 1920s after completion of the apartment house at 42-66 Phlox Place--an anticipation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission 40 years later. [Actually that building looks ornate compared to what followed it]

For a detailed history of Waldheim, see Green Party City Council candidate Paul Graziano's informative page. It should be noted that Forgotten NY doesn't endorse or favor political candidates, but if their websites have relevant information, we'll provide a link.

Continue east on Beech Avenue (a block south of Ash) left on 147th and right on Ash again, and, after passing under a massive weeping willow tree, you will see this imposing house on your right, at 147-38.

Ash Avenue moves through Flushing in fits and starts. It goes a block, is interrupted for a block, then runs a block more. The section between 147th and 149th Streets, though, looks transplanted from another part of town into Flushing. Its centerpiece is a brilliant white 3-story building at 147-38 with a complicated set of front porches, inclusing a many-windowed circular corner porch. The house was originally the Charles Pearl mansion.

The mansion, probably built in the late 1840s, dates back to eastern Flushing’s development as a bedroom community as the Long Island Rail Road was extended east. At the time Flushing was still dominated by the horticultural industry and the land was owned mostly by the Samuel Parsons family and by Nathan Sanford, the Chancellor of New York State. Sanford Avenue was developed in the 1830s-1870s with grand mansions and estates, some of which were summer-only. Charles Pearl built the Italianate house on a 5-acre tract facing today’s Sanford Avenue and 149th Street. Beginning in the 1880s Flushing began to be more greatly populated, and by the 1910s the mansion’s then-owner, the reverend George Eccles, sold off much of the 5-acre property and moved the house approximately 150 feet to its present location. The buildings developed on the sold-off property are still there for the most part, giving Ash Avenue an aura rather unlike its surrounding blocks.

Though the Eccles family occupied the building for most of the 1930s, it gradually fell into disrepair and was a boarding house for a time. Building contractor Matthew Kabriski, who had worked on the White House during the Truman administration, purchased the home for $12,500 in 1954 and set to work restoring its clapboards and repainted and restored the old house. The interior boasts oak and pine floors, marble sinks, and floor to ceiling windows.

The Flushing Historic Trust, a preservation group, is attempting to find the funding necessary to maintain the building, which is currently endangered, and perhaps turn it into a museum.

WAYFARING MAP: Kabriski Mansion

CONTINUE ON TO FLUSHING, PART 2

E me at erpietri@earthlink.net