Your webmaster is usually the one with the answers (well, some of the time) but when I set up ForgottenSlices in the summer of 2007 it was also for the purposes of asking questions about buildings and objects I don’t know about…for example, today’s feature in Little Neck.
Little Neck, of course, has one of the two remaining working farms in NYC of any size whatever (if you grow tomatoes in your front yard you are operating a farm, I suppose): the Queens Farm Museum, which was one of the first things covered in FNY back in 1999. The other is the Decker Farm, operated by Richmond Town Restoration in Staten Island.
The building shown in the title card can be found (or could, in December 2007) at 54-47 Little Neck Parkway, just north of the Long Island Expressway. Though it’s not found in any landmarking or historic preservation lists, it has turned up in some lists as the “Adams Farm.”
There are a huge front lawn, stone fence, an old-school mailbox with a flip flag for the mail carrier, and a brick driveway.
Some listings have it as the Adams Greenhouse and indeed there is one on the property. A barn or storage house is seen on the south side of the property.
(LEFT) side view of the house, accessible from Cornell Place in University Gardens, Nassau County. The farm property borders Queens and Nassau.
One thing’s almost certain: in today’s whirling real estate environment (in 2007 real estate was in trouble all over the country, with sale prices dropping dramatically except in NYC) developers are wasting no time snapping up large properties they deem suitable for multifamily housing, and this space seems ripe for that possibility. This slice of Queens history may be doomed. The Queens Farm Museum has made a bid on the farmhouse, so all may not be lost.
12/30/07
11/5/15 update: The Harvest Church of New York has purchased the site, while the greenhouse has been demolished.