DEWITT Clinton (1769-1828) was a founding father who served as NY State Assemblyman, NYS Senator, NYS Governor, US Senator and NYC Mayor during an illustrious career capped by his indefatigable support for the Erie Canal. Several streets around town were named for him, as well as a scattering of forts, schools and other structures. After Green-Wood Cemetery opened in 1838 his remains were exhumed from the original burial plot in Albany, NY and moved to Brooklyn in 1850. Three years later, Henry Kirke Browne’s monumental bronze statue of Clinton was placed at his burial site. It appears on the cover of New York Illustrated number for June of that year.
DeWitt Clinton lived in Maspeth for several decades in a house that had stood near Newtown Creek, on what is now 56th Terrace just west of 58th Street, in what is today a mostly industrial area with a few private residences. The house was built in the mid-1700s, and Clinton moved in about 1780; it is said original plans for the Erie Canal were drawn up there. During the Revolutionary War the building was occupied by General William Howe, who planned an invasion of NYC via Newtown Creek.
The house didn’t fare well in its later years, as the area surrounding it became increasingly industrial, and it was divided into tenements in the 1920s and burned down in 1933. In the 1930s, New York State placed a historical marker for the building at the intersection where 58th Street meets 56th Terrace at Maspeth Avenue. The sign read: DeWitt Clinton House 1790-1828. Stood several hundred feet north of here. Gov. Dewitt Clinton worked on plans for Erie Canal here. That original sign disappeared several years later; a truck may have claimed it.
In 2018 the Newtown Historical Society, whose president Christina Wilkinson stands next to the Clinton monument in the above photo, initiated a plan to place a new historic sign in the same location. I assisted in the effort by locating some property and census documents at Hofstra University that showed that Clinton owned property in the area. A new sign, in blue and gold colors matching the older NYS Department of Education sign (some of which are still found around town) was installed at the traffic island. Nearby are the burned-out former Clinton Diner and The Majestic, once called Clinton Hall.
Additionally, DeWitt Clinton lived in Queens County, primarily during his time as mayor, though he had a summer house in Whitestone. While he was NYS Governor, Whitestone became known as Clintonville in his honor. Though the neighborhood became “Whitestone” again during the 19th Century the name is remembered by the lengthy Clintonville Street and Clintonville Playground.
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