Though this modest 2-story frame house with yellow siding at 149-40 Roosevelt Avenue near 149th Place remains unmarked by a plaque or medallion of any kind, this is the home where former First Lady Nancy Reagan spent the first two years of her life.
Ann Frances Robbins was born on 7/6/1921 at Sloane Hospital for Women in NYC to Kenneth Seymour Robbins and actress Edith Luckett. The two divorced in 1928 and when Edith married neurosurgeon Dr. Loyal Davis, 7-year old Ann “Nancy” took on his last name. The family moved to Chicago and Nancy Davis later attended Smith College in Massachusetts. She was bitten by the acting bug and made it to Broadway before embarking on a succession of B-films in the 1940s and 1950s, including “Hellcats of the Navy” with husband Ronald Reagan.
Nancy Davis met Ronald Reagan because of the Hollywood blacklist of suspected Communist sympathizers. In 1949, an actress with the same name appeared on “the list” and Davis enlisted the aid of Screen Actors Guild president Reagan. The two hit it off and were married until Reagan’s death in 2004.
7/10/14
4 comments
I was trying to locate the original address of this house before the Queens’ renaming and renumbering of its streets went into effect in the late 1920’s. The house that Nancy Reagan lived in was not numbered on the Queens 1926 Vol. 3 Revised 1928 E. Belcher Hyde Map Company map, but it was directly across the street from 402 Amity Street, which also shows the new naming of the street as 40th Avenue before being renamed again to Roosevelt Avenue. 149th Street was originally named Central Avenue and 149th Place was originally named Wilson Avenue.
Thank you for the update. Such modest beginnings (of course we never would have considered “modest” during our Flushing childhood).
The New York Post, in a story about Mrs. Reagan dated March 7, 2016, gives the old address as 417 Amity Street.
My grandfather lived at 124 Amity Street in 1928 during a brief but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to emigrate from Ireland (at the fairly advanced age of 38). I recently discovered a photograph of him outside what I assume to be the house, as it is similar in design to the one shown here.