ELM TOWERS, LONG ISLAND CITY

HERE’S a handsome Tudor-ish apartment complex at 30th Drive and 29th Street in Long Island City. Though eastern Queens can sometimes resemble Nassau County, with shady residential streets and wide, boulevard like avenues, western Queens more resembles Brooklyn or the Bronx, though it still isn’t as apartment building- heavy as those two boroughs.

Going by the sign over the entrance, the complex is called Elm Towers, which actually gives a clue to old Queens street nomenclature.

There was a time in Queens history when many of the streets weren’t numbered. Beginning in 1915, a comprehensive numbering system for the borough was devised, but it was adopted in a catch as catch-can manner throughout the 1920s. Some neighborhoods adopted the new system before others did. Astoria was a relative latecomer.

A few years ago, I went to the NY Public Library hoping to obtain some scans of their vintage Hagstrom Maps editions from the Roaring Twenties. The clerk told me that couldn’t be done I don’t recall the exact reason but it was either that a) the maps did not fit their scanner or b) they weren’t in good enough shape that they could go in the scanner. The clerk did tell me that I could get copies done by shooting with my digital camera, so that’s just what I did. One of the areas I shot was Astoria, in order to show the old street names before the changeover. (I have since obtained online editions of the maps I wanted to reproduce)

At the top of this 1922 edition — the street outlines were used until the late 1990s — you can see Elm Street, which later became 30th Drive. Quite a few apartment buildings in Astoria carry the names of the streets they were built on, before the numbering took hold.

Across 29th Street, the developers of this pair of apartment buildings may well have been British, or Anglophiles at least. How do I know? The names of the buildings, mounted on brass plaques by the doors.

“Lady Hamilton” has nothing to do with any relative of Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary. Rather, it recalls Emma, Lady Hamilton, a 18th-Century model and entertainer who was depicted by portrait painter George Romney  (an antecedent of U.S. politicians George Romney and son Mitt Romney) and became the mistress of military hero Lord Nelson. In 1941, Emma and Lord Nelson’s relationship was depicted in That Hamilton Woman with Vivien Leigh and her husband Sir Laurence Olivier.

The other building, “Lady Patricia,” refers to Lady Victoria Patricia Helena Elizabeth Ramsay (born Princess Patricia of Connaught) (1886-1974), a granddaughter of Queen Victoria via her son, Prince Arthur, and Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. She gave up her royal title, though not royal family membership, when she married Royal Navy officer Sir Alexander Ramsay.

You never know what you’ll find if you look at signs…

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9/24/24